


Twisted Wonderland - Part 4

by Editor1



Series: Twisted Wonderland [5]
Category: Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (Movies - Burton), American McGee's Alice, Original Work
Genre: Alcohol, Alice in Wonderland but What if Game of Thrones, Angst and Porn, Bad coping mechanisms, Character Death, Death, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gentle femdom, Hurt/Comfort, Masochism, Mentions of incest, Multi, Plot With Porn, Political upheaval, Politics, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Public Sex Festival, Rape/Non-con Elements, Slow Burn, Treachery, Unresolved Tension, Violence, War, Whips, attempted fisting, masturbation as psychological torture, pain play
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:20:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 74,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22192426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Editor1/pseuds/Editor1
Summary: Alice died, Wonderland's fucked, and everyone seemed to collectively decide debauchery and ignorance on their dying world was more fun. Now the land is ruled by nepotism and vice. With only each other and the few others that have the strength to stand up against the four Royals of the land, Quill and Margret begin their descent into the maelstrom of war.But Quill is still reeling from the abuse at the hands of his father, and Margret struggles to face the monster she once was.Slow burn series filled with porn and political intrigue and that delicious Wonderland spice.
Relationships: Margret/Sylph, Quill/Everyone probably, Quill/Margret
Series: Twisted Wonderland [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1026699
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

MARGRET 

The clothes didn’t look like they’d fit me when I first put them on. I was surprised at just how much weight I’d lost. When I looked down at myself in reflection of the water basin, I could see my waistline, and the bones around it. I hadn’t been this thin in years. There were more scars than I knew what to do with, crisscrossing round muscle I’d only just started to gain back. When I looked up into the little looking glass and saw my face, I was at a loss for the person that looked back. I looked old. Old and thin. Wrinkles at the corners of my eyes, a thin line on either side of my jaw, my cheeks still sunken after so many weeks of getting my diet back to normal. There was a fine streak of grey hair at the front. I pulled at it with a faint, sad smile, and tucked it behind my ear. I tried to stand up a little straighter. I pulled my blouse tight, smoothed it out, and took a step back as I tried to get a better look. Looking presentable took time and patience, neither of which I’d ever learned or had. 

I turned back to my bedroll and frowned. It wasn’t made. Maybe they’d have something to say about that. I could hear Quill’s voice in my head. This was important, he would say. We have to make a good first impression. There can’t be any slip ups. I hadn’t creased the folds properly, nor had I tucked the blankets in upon themselves. Worry ebbed in my stomach. Whatever happened, he would be there. 

It was difficult, putting your trust in a person. Nearly impossible at first. 

I leaned back against the roughly hewn wall of my little room and turned to the small brazier still tinkling merrily in a corner. The flashes of heat were calming. Warmth was another thing I wasn’t used to. I’d have to ask Quill where he got the charcoal if I ever ran out. Or… About anything, for that matter. He still never told me much. Maybe that would change today. 

“You don’t need to knock,” I said to the sound of a fist against the door. 

Quill opened the door. The same freckles. The same golden eyes that I was only now starting to tolerate. 

“Well, I didn’t want to interrupt you.” 

“You’ve seen everything of me already, haven’t you?” 

He sighed like he was upset, but his shoulders were lax. “Do you not like your privacy? I would assume in a more sane state, you’d appreciate your own room.”

I smiled faintly. “I haven’t been appreciative of solitude much these days.” 

“Does a cell work better?” He nodded back towards the hall. “I’ll get my bedroll and study back into the dungeons.” 

“While I appreciate your attempts at humor, I don’t want to further ruin your already abysmal sleep schedule. I think I just like the company more than the silence of having an entire wing of tunnels to myself,” I gently nudged him to the side as I walked into one of the many veins of the Rabbit Hole complex. 

“I know. He closed the old wooden door behind me. A torch in his hands burned bright and fierce in the dark of the unlit corridor. It did well to illuminate his constant grim expression. He smiled enough, but he always seemed to lapse back into that sordid expression after a while. “Perhaps we can remedy that. You look well. How are you feeling?” 

“Good. I think I’ve put on more weight. Can you tell?”

“Perhaps. Your face looks fuller.” He started to walk a slow and steady pace down the hall. Falling in line, I glanced at him for a moment, smiled a little, and nudged him in the shoulder. 

“You’re not limping.”

“No, I’m not.” 

“You look good too.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But you’re tense.” 

“I’m worried,” he said. He looked up at me, and the light of the fire flickered in his eyes until they were orange. “Angie never approved of this. She’ll be looking for problems in everything we’ve done. She’ll see you, and all she’ll see is the you I brought in before. I thought about telling her, but all it would lead to is yelling and inconclusion. She needs to see you for how you are. They all do. And there’s no telling what kind of ruling the others will make. I just… What if something goes wrong? What if they can’t get past you? I don’t want to saddle you with this worry but… I have too much on my mind.” 

I swallowed the nervousness that seemed to eat away at me just as much as it did to him. “I’m ready to meet your humans, Quill. I’ll do my best. If we just focus on your reasons to bringing me in, I’m sure it will go alright. I’m another pair of hands. I can help. I…” I closed my eyes for a second. “I want to help.” 

“I would refrain from calling them “mine” per say,” he mussed. He didn’t have a beard, but he had this way of rubbing his chin like there was a beard there to ponder over. That’s how I knew for certain that limp had gone away. He wouldn’t have let himself gone without both his hands if he thought he was in danger of falling. “They’re not anyone’s.” 

“Sorry... I know.” I stared at him a little longer. It was easy to get lost in his face. He always looked so thoughtful. An introspective, strange individual. With a mind that I could never fully seem to grasp. What must he be thinking right now? How many ideas did he have swirling around in his head? How much about Wonderland did he know? He had machinations, thoughts, philosophies. I wanted to pick his brain. I don’t think I’d ever met such a thoughtful individual before. It bit saddening that even now, he still held things from me. It was understandable, I supposed. There were people he was protecting. But there was more. Where he came from, that shouldn’t have been classified, should it? I’d already told him some of my own history. All the pertinent parts, at least. That hurt, but I could still talk about it. He just pretended like his past didn’t exist. He just kept going. He was strong. And the way he looked, those golden eyes so thoughtful-

“Margret?”

“What?” 

“You’re staring.” 

“Huh?” 

“Margret, you’re about to walk into a brazier.” 

My knee connected with metal and the shock blinked me from my daydreams. 

“Oh. I see.” 

Quill brought the torch down to inspect the brazier that had been left in disuse for who knew how many hundreds of years, and hissed under his breath at the skin my knees had left behind on it. The blood was already starting to drip down in rivulets onto my shins. 

“I suppose we’ll be needing some gauze as well then.” 

“Oh, no, this is nothing,” I laughed hesitantly. “Sorry about that.” 

“Are you sure? That sound reverberated through the entire corridor. That must have…” He trailed off as he remembered my disorder. Not feeling pain was a foreign concept that most seemed to forget. “Nevermind.” 

“It’s alright, Quill.” I patted him on the back without a second thought. After I had done so, I paused, looked at my hand, and checked him for any sign that I had overstepped my bounds. “I get that a lot.” 

“You still confound me with that, you know,” he sighed. It was strange. He didn’t even seem to flinch. It was as though I hadn’t even touched him. But I knew I had. I had been pretty rough, actually. Sometimes I didn’t know my own strength, now that I was getting it back. “How can someone lack such a fundamental aspect of their lives? It boggles the mind.” 

“I stopped asking questions about it after I skinned my knee for the hundredth time. I just try harder to be capable of walking without falling these days. Granted, a difficult feat.” It felt good to joke. Especially when I looked down at his face, and saw the faint twinkling in his eyes. When I looked past the gold, there was a smile there. 

I hadn’t known humor in so long. 

“Sorry, would you like to hold the torch?” 

“Isn’t that technically a weapon? Would the humans appreciate it?” 

He thoughtfully pulled the fire back. “Perhaps not. Can you walk?” I gave him a look. He shook his head. “Right, sorry I asked.”

He continued along the slow descent towards the heart of the Rabbit Hole. I followed quickly behind him, catching up to his side and noting with a faint smile how he was a whole head shorter than me. 

Deep gouges in the walls lit eerily indeterminable shadows. We passed hallways that intersected in senseless angles, and stairs that seemed to go upwards into the deep darkness and quiet beyond. There was nothing else but the faint dripping, and our footsteps muffled by dust. But when I angled my head just right and raised my ear against a certain hallway, I could hear the whispering again. It made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. 

“I never get used to it down here,” I muttered. 

“I didn’t peg you for being afraid of the dark.” 

“It’s not the darkness, it’s the sounds. The way the echoes work down here. You see and hear and feel things you’re not supposed to.”

Quill raised the torch to illuminate his incredulous face. 

“Well, maybe you don’t hear it,” I surmised. 

“I don’t hear anything but the sound of our footsteps.” 

“Not even the dripping?” 

“This place is dust. There’s no water for miles.” 

I set my mouth in a firm line. 

“Wonderland madness?” He asked.

“I’m not certain. I heard things before, when I was down here. It’s faint now, but it’s still there.” 

“You probably shouldn’t tell the girls that.” 

“I’ll make a note of that,” I sighed, and waited for him to turn around and to keep walking. 

Perhaps the silence was too deafening for my ears to take. Perhaps I heard patterns where I shouldn’t. But those quiet whispers never seemed to leave me in the caves. They followed me with every muffled step through these dark and confusing corridors. I would have been lost if not for Quill leading the way. I watched the man that lead the way through the darkness. His eyes stayed ahead, watching the indiscernible darkness with nothing but the light of the torch in his hands to stave off the dark. 

“What are you looking at?” I asked him. 

“The way forward.” 

“It’s dark. I can’t even see anything.” 

“Well, I’ll get there eventually with the torch. And by then, I won’t want to trip on some stone I can’t see. It’s a precaution. Besides, what else would I be looking at?”

“Me?” 

He coughed. 

“Well, I know you’re there,” he said. I awkwardly tugged a lock of hair out from behind my ear and turned to look at the gouges in the walls instead. 

“Right, sorry.” 

The silence returned. Quill didn’t appear to like it, apparently. 

“How has your mind been, lately?” 

I paused in tugging my hair. 

“It’s been… A process. Slipping out of that world wouldn’t have been possible without you. But… It takes time. I’ve been trying. There are memories I prefer not to think about. Things that hurt.” 

Quill nodded knowingly. 

“Sometimes the best healing occurs when you force yourself to remember. I have the luck… Or perhaps the misfortune, of basking in all the things that have happened in my life. Perhaps eventually you will come to accept the things that you have done. As long as it takes. There’s no time limit on a process like that.” 

“Except when it comes to being accepted by your humans, right?” 

“The humans,” he corrected sharply. I flinched. 

“Sorry.” 

“It’s alright. Even you are able to get more than Sylph ever could. She’s… Less than pleasing, with her ideology.” 

“Oh, yes. Sylph…” I trailed off, thinking to myself. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about your world.” 

He apologetically sighed. “I know. I’ll tell what I can soon. But I feel like I’ve already betrayed my friends and their trust by doing as much as I have. These past few months… They’ve led to some strain. Now that the others and I are no longer required to stay within one single room, we no longer have to get along as well as we once did. The girls learn new things about themselves every day. And I worry that perhaps they might have different inclinations than we first intended for their safety. I don’t want to betray the trust that has already become so strenuous. But I want to keep them safe too.” 

“Your friends don’t sound like much friends if they don’t like you now that they have freedom,” I muttered. 

“They’ve never had it before. I don’t blame them.”

“It’s a kind of false security, too. Is this really freedom, down here?” He paused for a moment, chewing thoughtfully on the inside of his gum. 

“What do you mean?” 

“We live in the dark and the night and wait for the scraps that those above might leave behind. We sound like vermin.” I hardened my eyes. “I’m… Sick of being vermin, I think. It just sounds like a sad existence, being down here. I know that it’s necessary. I know what you’ve told me… As little as that is. But it all sounds like the end of a tragedy. No wonder the girls seem to want to do something. I’d imagine going mad sitting around and waiting for food to be brought to them.” 

“What would you propose in opposition?” 

“Oh? I don’t have anything to propose. I was just… Ruminating, I suppose.” 

“They way you were talking made it seem like there was a “but” somewhere in there. But what?” 

“But… nothing? We are fugitives. All of us. I can’t go back up there. Not after…” 

“Sylvia and the others,” he said softly. 

I bit my lip, and nodded.

“I don’t know if the Queen would care if you killed a human servant,” he mussed. “And the others, no one knew your identity. I wonder if you’d be able to return unhindered.” I’m not sure he understood. Sure, it hurt that he was probably right about Sylvia. It was really such a nothing thing for a lesser being to die, in the eyes of the Queen. But when that died down, the greater rage remained. The that had kept me going all these years. And then there was this fear, this stupid fear. To face the Queen again… The hand that once held my dagger twitched. 

“The Queen wanted me gone. If I returned, she’d find a way to get me executed. If she didn’t, even then…” I looked slowly down at my own two hands. Covered in scars, just as they were every day. It was difficult to tell what scars were from chopping potatoes with my brother and my father, and what scars were from the knife that had dug into my hands when I’d repeatedly stabbed the weapon deep into the heart of some poor victim. I couldn’t even remember them all. And it was my fault. Of course it was. But to say that the Queen had no hand in the creation of my insanity would be an outright lie. People still died directly thanks to her, with no help of mine. Rage still flowed in my veins. “I’m not sure if I have the strength to look her in the face just yet.” 

That dagger was in Quill’s room now. As long as he felt it necessary. As long as required. I was more than willing to give it up. It was never mine to have in the first place. It was a cursed thing, given to me by a cursed person a world and a half ago. It was bad. I hate that I had to keep telling myself that. Late at night, my hands clenched around nothing. Even now, they twitched and I stayed close to Quill. 

“You don’t need to explain yourself.” 

“I don’t want you to baby me.” I was furious. At the Queen, at myself. She had sway on me, even now. I was too weak to control it. 

“Believe, I won’t.” He looked ahead again. In the distance, the first of many lit braziers cracked with charcoal, leading the way toward the center hole of this labyrinth. A crypt, more like. “I feel like I’m thrusting you straight into the fire as it is.” 

As we passed it, Quill doused his torch and left it on the side of the wall. His mouth was set in a firm, thoughtful line again. He touched the edge of one of the corridors, as if remembering something. I followed behind silently. I didn’t want to break him out of whatever thoughts he was so engaged in. I always had my own to focus on anyways. There were so many things I still struggled to come at with a clear mind and open arms. 

“We’re almost there,” He muttered. I nodded my head. 

Quill stopped outside a rickety wooden door like all others. The only difference were the noises behind. It was strange, to hear such chatter so far down in the depths. They were loud, too like there was a dinner party just behind it. The giggling of little girls enjoying each other’s company.

When he opened it, I realized how little preparation I’d done for this moment.

There were more than a dozen women and girls, all of them sat around a set of tables pushed together in the middle of the brightly lit chamber. The room had been repurposed for dining. Some unwashed bowls curled up on a side table in the corner, next to a basin of water. A couple meals were still half eaten with spoons and cracked bread beside them. More than a dozen sets of eyes turned to open door, and that chatter dropped down to silence. 

Quill stood in front of me, but that didn’t help. The sheer amount of bodies after so many weeks of nothing but Quill… It was a lot. There was an urge to run that I knew I had to ignore. Just the simple act of shifting my footing had the whole group flinching in response. Now that the silence had come, they were all focused on me and me alone. Staring at me. I suppressed a whimper. 

The sound of a chair scraping against stone was coupled with a sudden flurry of skirts. Quill raised his arms to stop a bedraggled woman. She was older, with wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and more than a few loose grey hairs pulled into a tight bun. Tightly fisted and with her old rags catching up to a thunderous walk, she was only still with the Lord noble’s carefully calm voice. 

“Angie, she’s a little overwhelmed, give her a minute.” He lowered his arms slowly. 

“Oh she’s overwhelmed, now? You didn’t even bring her in fetters,” The woman snarled. Her shoulders braced as she looked furiously between the two of us. “Right as we’re eating? We thought we could feel safe here, Quill.” 

“I promise I would never endanger any of you. I don’t take those chances. Margret has regained her sanity. She’s here to help. I told you I saw growth within her, and that she had changed. I wanted to show you. I’m tired of secrets.”

“But to bring her here? With all of the others? Are you mad? Secrets are the only thing keeping us alive!” 

I recognized one of them amongst the others. The girl with owlish eyes. She sat between the others with a little girl in her lap no more than ten.

I rubbed my throat awkwardly as I slowly moved back onto my own two feet. “I… Winnie, right? I remember you from before. You were the only one to visit us.” 

The girl flushed like she’d just been caught in a lie. Ducking her eyes down, she grasped the child tighter in her arms. The little girl pushed her face into Winnie’s chest. I suppressed a flinch. “Oh, I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to insult you before – you remember that?” 

I smiled a tired smile. “It’s alright. I wasn’t in my right mind. I… Well, I’m alright now.” I had to keep my voice strong. I had to keep my head up. This wasn’t a great start, but I wasn’t about to be the reason this all fell apart. 

“What are you doing with Winnie?” The older woman turned on me with a glare.

I stepped forward and gently nudged Quill out of the way. That had to be Angie. No one else had the frown that Quill had so carefully depicted, nor the aggressive strength and leadership he had warned me of. Her eyes were fire. She was looking for a reason to find something wrong with me. If I had any chance of making Quill proud, well, this was my moment. I only had this one chance to make an impression. 

Bowing, I quietly drew in a breath and tried to steady my heart and resolve. “I just recognized her. I know that we didn’t properly explain when I’d be introduced to your group. But I wanted to thank you for letting me stay here.” I stood back up to smile at the woman, but her scowl was resolute. She kept looking from between Quill to me with those narrowed, analyzing eyes. They flicked over every scar she could find on me. I felt like melting under that glare. 

“It wasn’t my choice to house a wretch like you. This noble overstepped his bounds and decided to help one of his own over the humans he claims to care about. That always seems to be the way with nobles, thinking that they can lead everything they touch. Only ever really caring about their own kind. You were never supposed to be here. And you shouldn’t be here now. You’re endangering us all, Lord noble, with your little pet project.”

I could see Quill gulp. 

I carefully took another breath. 

“And I thank you for that, even if it went against your judgment. You’ve given me a chance to prove myself. Whatever the cause for Quill’s mercy, I still consider you part of if not most of the reason I am alive and well.” God, those public speaking lessons I’d suffered through in tutoring were coming back to haunt me. I held onto them for all they were worth, but it was up to my own voice to see this through. 

“Those are pretty words for a girl covered in scars looking like little more than a skeleton. And with red hair no less. Do you know who else has red hair, noble? What makes you any different from the ruler that put us in this position in the first place? Where is our security? How do I know you won’t betray us at every opportunity? I saw what you were when you came in here. This could be little more than an act.” 

I gulped, but before I could speak, Winnie spoke up. 

“We don’t know anything about you.” She raised her voice, but dipped her head into her chest when I focused on her. “Quill has told us so little. You’re a stranger. And you don’t know us. You don’t care about us.” 

I glanced to Quill. Nervously, he caught my look and tried to grimace. “I told them that you were a noble on the run from the Queen. To be fair, I don’t know much, myself.” 

“Right… I owe everything to Quill.” As I spoke, I tried to hold myself straighter. I tried to look at Angie in the eye while not challenging, not withholding anything, never pausing once to look down at my shoes. I had to be strong, but subservient. Willing, and not willful. I had to be.

It was a sea of brown and black worried eyes. All lives that I used to think were so useless. But there were children here, in the laps of these women. Little girls holding onto their mothers. “He saved me,” I continued. It felt so strange. Like they mattered. Suddenly, I could see why Quill always listened to them. Where he was going when he wasn’t by my side, and why he kept going even when he was as exhausted as he was. “He cares about you all more than anything, and he took me in for the purpose of helping you. And I intend to do as he asks. What you ask. The day he found me, I chose to make my life forfeit. I had nothing left within me. He brought me back from the brink, he put his time and effort into helping me, and you and him both used up the supplies that are already so scarce. My life is yours to do with how you will.” 

I must have said something wrong. The room was silent. Angie’s face was unreadable. Winnie’s eyes were wider than ever. I turned to Quill, and my anxiety worsened. Even he was staring. I dipped my head nervously. 

“Sorry – I didn’t meant to say something wrong.” 

“You didn’t answer my question,” Angie muttered. 

“I – what?” Bollocks.

“What makes you any different? Who are you, Margret? What kind of noble are you? The kind that lives for everything, or the kind that lives for nothing?” 

I bit my lip, glancing at Quill’s stunned expression as well as the rest in the room. “I’ll be frank, I’m not the most philosophical. Or at least, I’m not good at it. This red hair is something I got from my father. A man that ran from being the Right Hand of the Queen to live in the meadows beyond Wonderland Forest. He took with him his human wife, Alice, and had me there, in safety away from the Capital. They hated the Court and everything it stood for. My parents committed treason to escape the Queen’s cruel grasp.” 

“And how can we prove this?” 

“Well… You can’t.” Angie scoffed. “But that’s all I have to give you. I won’t lie, it’s not much.” 

One of the girls spoke up. Her eyes were narrowed, her dark brown hair braided in a fishtail down to her waist. “How did you end up in the Capital, then? If you were living such a wholesome life away from this depraved society?” 

“The Queen brought me here.” I knew what that would sound like. The faces they made though, they were something I never thought I’d see. It was exhilarating. With every fibre of their beings, they hated the Queen. They looked at me as though I were a slug to have even seen the Queen with my own eyes. They were terrified, angry, offended. I was both terrified, and amazed. 

“So you’re in direct alliance with the Queen then?” Angie leaned back with utter fury flashing in her eyes. “Quill, do you realize what you’ve done?” 

“Margret.” Quill outstretched a hand towards me, but I gently took it and placed it back by his side with a smile. 

“It’s alright.” I turned back to Angie and bowed my head. “I apologize for what it sounds like. But make no mistake. If I could, I would rip that woman limb from royal limb.” 

A little girl gasped. Even Angie’s face seemed to wither away into confused aggression with no clear outlet. I was angry too. I wanted to show her. 

“She took everything away from me,” I said. “She took me to her palace and made my life a living hell for the purposes of her own enjoyment, and to carefully expunge from me the last thing I ever cared about. She killed my brother. So it would do me the utmost pleasure to work for the lot of you. I want to help. As long as it will harm a royal decree, I will work in your favor.” 

I turned to Quill. I’d told him some. Enough, I’d thought. But now it seemed like I’d been withholding things from him out of the childish vendetta of him holding things from me. His eyes were strange. There were working mechanisms in his head, moving at speeds I could never hope to catch up to. He actually looked pleased. I could only hope this woman was too. And I’d have to remind myself to tell him the whole truth. As much as I could muster, this time. 

“You speak like some kind of pompous figurehead,” Angie growled. “Those are big words for just one noble. And a female noble at that.” 

“Being able to think with one head instead of divided in two seems less likely to muddle my ability to fight.” 

I got a laugh out of her. An actual laugh. She guffawed, and the rest of the girls relaxed their shoulders as though a weight had been lifted from the room. I felt it too.

“You’ll be worked hard,” The woman said. She tipped her chin up. “I’ll make sure that you pay us back for every spoonful of broth you’ve ever had. And that’ll mean stealing some from up above. We can’t live off of what the scribes give us alone.” 

“I’ll do everything I can and then some.” 

“And you’ll be breaking a bloody lot of rules besides that. We have people out there, people that need saving. You’ll never have a moment’s peace, I can promise you that.” 

“Good. I don’t think I could rest knowing I could be spitting on the Queen’s shoes.” 

“And don’t you think for a second that we trust you, Margret,” she growled. “Even if you do work for us, you’ll be kept on the tightest of leashes. My family is more important to me than my own life. And yours is worth only the meals I’ve let you have. If I don’t see a return on those investments, I’ll gladly keep you silent so that the rest of my family can stay alive to recoup the losses.”

I gulped, but nodded my head with confidence. There was a tension on my shoulders. I think I might have been grinding my teeth. Too many eyes. It was starting to get to me. “I’ll do everything I can to show you I can be trusted.” 

“And I don’t believe your stupid story for a second, about gallivanting off somewhere beyond the Wonderland forest.” 

“I don’t expect you to.” 

“For all I know, you’re an agent sent by the Queen.” 

I grit my teeth further. “A starving agent on the side of the road with a lost mind?” 

“I can’t take chances. Prove yourself. Maybe you can deal with the other nobles.” She crossed her arms. “You’re a Queen noble. Perhaps those scribes might actually share an audience with you. Or you can get the Duchess noble to talk. That would put you to good use for now.” Her eyes narrowed. “But a Queen noble who’s ever been in direct connection with the Queen is no ally of mine.”

“But she can stay with the others?” Asked Quill. “In the same wing?” 

“I want the room locked at all times. And you will be shadowing her whenever you have spare time. I don’t want you looking anymore at that useless literature.” 

“But she can stay?” 

Angie glowered. “Fine.” 

Quill brightened. “Then, can I explain our situation to her?” 

“Absolutely not.” 

“I… I don’t mind.” Winnie’s voice was tiny after Angie’s barking growl. The older women turned on the girl. 

“Winnie, do you know what you’re saying? We’ve shown our faces to this girl. We’ve already done too much. You said yourself that we don’t know her.” 

“I trust Quill,” Winnie smiled. “Don’t you?” 

I blinked. Beside me, Quill straightened. Angie sputtered. 

“I trust him more than other nobles,” the withered woman barked. “But that doesn’t mean his judgement is infallible.” 

“He brought us here, didn’t he?” 

“A fluke. He knew it could have easily been a fool’s errand.” 

Winnie sighed. “But he’s our friend. He’s helped us at every opportunity. He runs himself ragged for the lot of us.” The crowd began to murmur. “If he truly believes that she’ll do the same, and help us, then we have to believe him. God knows we need the extra help, right?” She let the girl in her arms go and stood up to brace her hands on the table. “We can’t keep doing this with only Quill allowed to go to the surface. We won’t have enough food if we keep rescuing loved ones. But we can’t leave them stranded up there either. And Quill is always putting himself in harm’s way up there too. People know his face. They won’t know hers.” She blinked. “Will they?”

“I don’t think they’d care,” I muttered.

“They won’t,” Quill said firmly. He looked to me with that same strange gaze. “She’s a fresh face that we need, if we’re to have any hope of rescuing those we love. What about Evaline’s sister? Margret could help us. I know she could.” 

The murmurs rose. Angie’s mouth soured. 

“Fine. If you are all so stubborn and gullible, then do what you want with the Queen noble. But I promise you, the second she steps out of line, I will be taking matters into my own hands. Now get her out of my sight. I’d like to enjoy my dinner.” 

I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath that whole time. Or just how much the world was spinning. But the moment Quill closed that door behind us and we were once again out in the hall, I found the ground rising up to catch me. I nearly made it there, too. But a hand roped around my waist and pulled me back, then slowly helped me down to sit up against the wall. And then Quill was right there, worried and carefully checking my pulse. 

“You did well,” he said. “I didn’t think you were capable of talking like that.” 

“Talking like what?” 

“Like,” he paused. “You knew what you were doing.” 

I forced a laugh. 

“Years of pretending, and a little tutoring from the Queen’s finest pedophiles.” 

The blond’s eye twitched. “Right. Well, you did well enough to turn Angie to your favor. That’s no easy task.”

“I wouldn’t have called that turning her to my favor.” 

“For Angie, that’s about as good as you’ll get for now.” He patted my hand. “But you did it. And now you can help us.” 

“Just point the way forward, and I’ll go there.” I tried that false confident smile on him, and he faltered. 

“That,” he said.

“What?”

“How do you manage to do that?” 

“The whole pretending to know what I’m doing thing? I just pretend to know what I’m doing. I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s not anything special, is it? I’m just smiling.” 

“No, no…” He shook his head and carefully pulled himself up, taking my hands and helping me with him. But his mind was whirling again, like a machine. He had something, but he wasn’t telling me. “You should get some rest. I’ll have work for you soon enough. Use your regular quarters for the time being, but we’ll transition you to an empty room in this wing later.” 

“I’ve done nothing but sleep. When are you going to brief me on everything that’s going on? I still don’t even know who you are.” 

“My name is Quill. I’m from the Lord’s court. I traveled here with a human I was trying to rescue. That went sour, and I was rescued by those women you just saw. And so I owe them my life. And now you owe them yours too. Does that suffice?” He looked up at my expectantly. His hands were still on mine, and he didn’t seem to notice. I looked down at them. 

“Not even slightly.”

He sighed. “I’ll answer what I can on the way, but you still need time to recover. And I have work to do. Besides,” He looked over my body in that scientific way of his. “You’re no longer as thin, but there is work to be done. You’re strong Margret, and you know how to fight. That’s something that might come in handy in the future. But first we need to get you back to where you were.”

I watched him for a moment. The way he raked his golden eyes raked over me. His hands were still on mine. 

“Do you need help back to your room?”

“That would be appreciated.” 

He nodded, let go of my hands, and headed back down the corridor. For a moment, I just stood there. I could still feel his hands on mine. 

“Margret?” 

“Ah- Sorry!” I was stumbling to catch up to the man with the yellow hair, right up until I was side by side with him, and picking his brain for every little thing he would let me hear the answer to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains: anal masturbation, masochism, mentions of incest (siblings and father and son) and abuse, bad coping mechanisms, attempted fisting, pain play, alcohol, and gentle femdom.

QUILL

The words grew blurry on the scroll the longer I looked at them. I tried to bring the candle closer, but it was no good. I hadn’t even been reading that long, just a few hours. The wick hadn’t burned down that far. I grit my teeth and tried to ignore it. If I just focused on the words alone, tried to imagine them above everything else, then maybe I could just wish it away. Willpower, that was all I needed. Just enough willpower to get me through this stupid craving. It was a habit I needed to break myself of anyways. 

Let’s focus on the scrolls then. Alice’s last days, those are interesting, aren’t they? Her supposed ascension to Queenhood as a human and subsequent disappearance. Hard to tell with all of these riddles and mannerisms, I suppose, but there’s enough here to parse together the fiction into a composite story. She came back to Wonderland after her initial visit, it seemed, but even that is difficult to tell. Much of the stories this far back appear to descend into the classic madness of a world not guided by laws of any nature. Word play works much like scaffolding to hold up a vibrant world that sounds more like a children’s book than that of any real function. Her travels don’t seem to work through any real geography of the region, including her eventual disappearance through, what, a fog? A sleep? The usurpation of an empire? The bludgeoning of the Red Queen herself? These writings descend into madness. Nothing like that of the Lord Court’s book keeping. Old and barely still there on the papyrus that I worked so carefully to keep whole, all of it sounding like a legend at most. The most curious part I kept coming back to, was the nature of the royalty. Alice as a Queen could be considered little more than metaphor, but the White Queen? The Red King? The knights, the Jack, the Knave, all of them positions in a court now lost to history? None of these characters seemed to fit within the world we know today as our own. These legends tended to veer so carefully around the hierarchy of old. The King of Hearts was a character so prominent in the old world, and yet it was as though such a man never existed. Nor, it seems, the case for the White Queen. Though my sneaking suspicions led me to believe that perhaps the Duchess of the original visit and the White Queen of the second were perhaps one and the same. But that just brought on further questions. If these scribes were meticulous, though mad, why would they split these people in two? Why would they do anything, I began to wonder, because these writings they did were more philosophical than historical. 

Chess pieces, cards, croquet, fairytales, a world so vibrant and filled with a mad magic and children’s fancies. It truly did seem to be a creation of the child Alice’s mind, like it was first surmised by the original scribes in their ledgers. The others wouldn’t touch these scrolls, and yet these were the very religion that the humans kept so close to their breast. I wondered sometimes if perhaps Angie or Winnie would be interested in hearing about their messiah, but then, I doubt they would appreciate writings such as these that I myself could barely understand. Still, some of these ideas were intriguing. For every similarity I could find, there would be more than a few differences to make up for the fact. It became more of a parody of our world than that of a history. There was never a mention of the depravity and sin we live in. The deaths and destruction of Alice’s world were fantastical, whimsical even. Her world was innocent. And her leaving it led to this change. A change, it should be noted, that I could not pinpoint for the life of me. A change that occurred somewhere between Alice’s leaving of Wonderland, and that of the next scribe, who spoke of the last hunting of dragons to extinction for the safety of the land. The four Royals rode out in search of those that hid in the Wonderland Forest and wiped their existence off the face of the Earth. A brutal but fitting end, I surmised. It made sense that such monsters would destroy some of the little magic still left in the world. 

Here is where the pages began to blur. It wasn’t that my eyes had gone. But the words on the page, though read, were immediately forgotten in my mind. Instead those damnable thoughts had taken over my mind again. My body moved on its own and continued to flick through meaningless scribbles, and I had to catch myself and reread the same passage every few minutes to the point that I felt like I was reading backwards more than forwards. My hands shook as I held the page. With every passing moment, it seemed those thoughts were closer and closer to encroaching upon me. 

Focus on this, Quill. Focus. Learn. And plan. Decide. That’s what they need you to be. You have to have a good head on your shoulders. Think. Think harder. Let it pass. Stop thinking of things like that. Words on a page. Come on. You know what’s going to happen the moment you give in. The moment you stop thinking, the moment you’re no longer burying your nose in books, it’s going to hit again and you’re not going to be able to handle it. If I could just… Read a little more, think a little harder, be a little more conscious and in the moment. 

I stopped at the last line of the paragraph, and sighed.

No good. 

Sitting back in the old wooden chair, I stared up at the dusty cave ceiling. The straining erection in my trousers wouldn’t go down.

I’d lasted two weeks this time, willing it down each and every time the brief thoughts would strike me. Those thoughts that made me shiver and shake in ways I never thought they could. Thoughts that I desperately wished didn’t exist. It would have been better to forget them all. Sometimes I envied Margret’s ability to hide behind a fog of madness. But there was no excuse for this. It seems I’d lost again. 

I looked down at myself, gingerly touched the bulge, and felt a wash of familiar arousal. At the same time, my stomach churned. It had been my father, this time. He’d planned an orgy with a few of his friends and I was to be the star of the show. I willed myself to think of the future ideas wavering in my head that were still so fragile and new, but only seemed to catch the brief moments where I’d had my face up to the hilt on some man’s cock, staring up at him and moaning into his length while a guard pounded me into a mess. And my father’s eyes, those damned golden eyes, staring down at me, stroking my hair, telling me what a good slut I was. Touching me. Training me.

I found myself curled up in bed, shaking. 

The candle still flickered in the corner of the room next to the forlorn scroll. I couldn’t even remember what the story had been about anymore. It was important, I knew it was, but my own mind fought against me. It begged for release and simultaneously screamed at the reason why. All I could think about were the idea of hands on me, touching me, holding me down as I tugged down my trousers and gingerly pulled out the cock that had been leaking precum for far too long. Everything was slick, sticky, and it ached. I hissed as I drew my hand away. The head looked purple. The overwhelming urge to throw up was punctuated with the need to move forward. 

I wanted to think more about those things that had gotten me so hot and bothered. That guard had been rough. It hurt. My father’s hand had been coarse. But I couldn’t. I shouldn’t. There had to be something else I could focus on. Jillian whispered in my ear when I had been about to finish. Her squeeze was violent as she rubbed my cock in time with Lod’s hips. I reached down behind myself, brushing my own entrance and tilting my head down in shame as I realized just how much that part of me ached as well. There was this growing urge to close my eyes as I sunk in that first finger. But I knew the moment I did, I’d be overwhelmed. I’d see the things I kept telling myself I didn’t want to see. 

I just wanted to get this over with.

I could hear my father’s voice in my ear as I pushed in another. Rough, just like the guard, pounding them in together in a needy, desperate way. “You like that, you little slut?” My father had told me so quietly, as if it were some kind of secret we had to keep. I pushed my fingers in deeper and willed myself to think of something else. That pain. God, that pain. My cock stood at attention from the near ripping feeling of my own fingers thrusting vigorously into my ass. I couldn’t see for the hair in front of my face. Maybe my cousins. Maybe Lod. Lod’s face, red and panting. Blond hair. Just like mine. Just like me. Like brothers. And Jillian pressed up against my back, willing the both of us onward, staring at us and watching at the indecent display. We put on a show for her. We wanted her to watch. We ached for it. I’d arched my hips up to show her Lod’s cock moving slick back and forth inside me thanks to the precum and ample saliva.

I forced a hand on my cock and let that pain take me further. It hadn’t been touched in too long, my ass was easier, but that pain from oversensitivity made me grit my teeth and grip my erection until I could feel the flesh squeeze between my hands. It was better when it hurt. I could hear her now, that sweet laughter, the sadistic gleam. Jillian had shown me how good it could hurt. With her mouth, her teeth, that firm slender hand that prodded at the slit and asked with a teasing voice if she should try out that hole where piss came out. Lod’s panting and desperate whining pleas for more as I bounced on him and begged, even as I bled. He wanted to hurt me, just as much as she did. He was just more polite. He always asked when he was going faster than I could handle. I always said yes, but even though he wanted it, he never stopped second guessing himself. He could never understand why I liked him so much. My brother was bigger than me. More dominant than me. I loved that. I wanted the both of them. Just wanted to be held. I didn’t want anyone else. 

I rocked deep into my own hand while simultaneously pinching the tip of my poor cock, and was startled to hear the sharp, keening whine that echoed throughout the room. My heart was pounding as my hand paused. Surely no one heard that. Surely I could keep going. Just finish dealing with this and move on. 

No one came. It was silent. Slowly, I began to rock again, on three fingers this time, carefully stroking my cock as I worked back into the rough, quick jerks of my hand. 

I hated that it was my cousins that were the better option. Their faces were tinged with wrongness I couldn’t stop forcing myself to admit. Incest. You got off on wanting to be fucked by your own brother, you disgusting pig. Slut. How dare you. Your cock is getting harder the more you think of Lod’s cock pounding into your poor abused ass. You’re practically dripping just at the memory of Jillian’s breasts pressed up against you, fingering herself while she got off on the scene in front of her. The idea of someone’s cock inside you, related to you. Something bigger than yourself. The comfort of family, the slutty, debauched look of your own relatives. You’re hard just at the though of your father inside - 

I grit my teeth and tried to ignore it. But one couldn’t just ignore the way my fevered, sexed up brain was leading. I was bouncing on four fingers and arched back for more, savagely stroking myself off and pinching at my own bollocks. I didn’t want it but I did. Those eyes. Golden eyes. Urging me to suck on him, using my mouth as a toy. Using my ass for his own pleasure. My own father, fucking me to a mess and I couldn’t help but beg for more. I couldn’t think. I just wanted, and I wanted desperately. I needed him. I needed something inside me. Four fingers wasn’t enough. Tears gathered and my stomach flared with another wave of nausea. He’d been so gentle, the first time he’d made me suck him off. Why did he have to be gentle. Why did he have to want me to get off too. Why couldn’t it just have been violent. He loved to watch me, squirming in front of him as I was rammed from behind by any number of older men. I loved to be watched. He knew that. He did everything I loved. He made me into everything he loved. And I couldn’t bloody stop thinking about it. 

It was good. Imagining bouncing on his cock was good. Imagining the Lod was good. Imagine what Skylar would think of me. 

I gulped and wished that was enough to make me stop. But it wasn’t. It just made me rock into my fingers harder. 

The precum dribbled against the bed and my hand as I bit into the side of my gum and tried to stay silent. I wanted to scream. The slick noises of my cock being stroked so roughly made me sick to my stomach. 

Touching myself hurt in a way I never knew I didn’t want. I thought I liked the pain. I thought I could be that person, with Lod and Jillian, enjoying ourselves and pretending the world didn’t exist. We always knew it was wrong. That’s what made it better. But then my father, and Skylar, and everyone. 

I wanted a cock, pain, a pussy, anything, I wanted to finish, I desperately wanted to finish. 

One last memory of my father inside me, and it was over. There was semen all over my hands, my ass clenched around the fist I had tried to shove inside myself. And I was shaking. Unable to comprehend what had just happened. Like some kind of newborn lamb, staring at that flickering candle and wondering if I was still where I thought I was. Trying with great difficulty not to vomit the gruel in my stomach. Trying not to cry. 

This never happened with Skylar. 

I went to the water basin, and methodically began to clean. I tried to be a robot. It helped, somewhat. At least I went through the motions of pretending there were still some strands of sanity. But then I looked up to the smudged looking glass, and saw my own face in the mirror. A mess of a human being, flushed and tearful. There was the child. 

With a deep sigh, I tugged up my trousers, and returned to my desk. One more look at the scrolls, and it was clear I wasn’t going to get anymore work done today. The candle wobbled as I slumped against the dusty wood and closed my eyes. 

My head was swimming. I’d failed again. I always seemed to. And now this was the price. Not even sleep would keep these thoughts at bay. Those nightmares were ample. No, I’d have to wait for my mind to stop racing, and maybe then I could bury everything back into my work. 

Three knocks. 

“Quill? I’m back from the surface. I got us something, I thought maybe you’d like it. You up? It’s the middle of the day topside.” 

Slowly, I pulled myself away from the desk, wiped my eyes clear of any remaining tears, and took a deep breath. I was nowhere near presentable but this would have to do. 

“Come in Margret. I’ve just been researching.” 

“You’re always researching.” The Queen noble opened the door with a grin. “Those words don’t make a lick of sense to me, but you can’t seem to get enough of them.”

She’d gained more weight. With that, she’d gained muscle too. Hers was a striking, towering figure, taller than any of the other humans. Scars littered her body, but those eyes told such a different story. Vibrantly green, and strangely hopeful. She strode into my chambers with a sack over her shoulder and a charismatic smile that lit up the place more than the candle. Strong arms pulled the bag over to the small set of table and chairs in the corner of the room, where she got to work untying the cord. Her hands were a mess of scar tissue that she still managed to work deftly with. 

“How was your mission this time?” I asked her. 

“Fine. I already dropped everything else with Angie. Nice shipment of vittles came in and I swiped the lot.” She adjusted the ruddy black cloak around her neck before she finished untying the cord. “It was just the usual, Quill. The cloak did what it always does. Nothing to worry about. Except~” She pulled a long bottle out from the sack and held it up with a victorious grin. “I got this.” 

“And what is that?”

“High quality whiskey, the vendor said. I didn’t catch anything else before I grabbed it and went running.” 

“You stole whiskey.” I frowned. 

She frowned right back at me. “We’re already stealing things to keep everyone alive and happy. And you’re working yourself to the bone. I thought a little alcohol would help ease our nerves. The both of us. Non-stop work is going to burn us down to embers if we never stop to allow ourselves a breath.” Her smile faded. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, I suppose.” 

“I just think our resources could have been put towards something more constructive.” 

She sat back on the chair with a deep sigh, placing the bottle on the table beside the sack. “Maybe. But Quill, how long have you been here since I last left? Did you ever leave this room?” 

“A few times.” I shrugged. “I need to research.”

“Research what, this time? What could we possibly gain from ancient history?” 

I bit my lip. “I’ve just… Been thinking. There’s a lot of information here that’s never been seen by anyone other than those scribes. There are things here the Royals would never want us to see. It was like another world, back then. Something so different. They would have us believe that Wonderland has always had four Royals, with four kingdoms, and four different nobility. All of it seems to set in stone. So natural. Sane. But even if half of these are the writings of a madman, there’s still nothing like our world there. The Royals made us believe in a lie for the sake of agreeing with their ruling, and silently rewrote history. There’s…” I trailed off. Margret was staring at me. Those green eyes could be incredibly piercing when she wanted them to be. “What?” 

“What?” She blinked.

“You’re staring.” 

“No – no I was just listening.” She turned quickly away to fiddle with the bottle’s label. “I don’t know how old history is going to help the girls get food and reunited with relatives, is all. Or…” She spoke more quietly. “Help us get Isabelle, you know?”

I shook my head, and sighed. She was right. It was all madness, those tenuous plans circulating in my mind. No one would ever think they could go anywhere. They were nothing more than radically philosophical musings. We should be focusing on the moment at hand. Rescuing who we could. At least she had the right idea. 

Margret’s entrance seemed to do what it always did. Suddenly the darkness seemed to disappear, and in its place was an infectious energy that she brought with her wherever she went. The tears in my eyes were gone. Getting up, I took the candle and placed it on the table as I sat down beside her. “Let’s open that bottle of yours,” I decided. “You put in the work to steal it. It would be useless to waste it.” 

“Really?”

I gripped the bottle and made to uncork it myself. Trying for a few seconds, I eventually gave it back to her with a sheepish smile. “I need to stop thinking.” 

“Right, I’m not sure that’s a reason to drink.” 

“It’s a very good reason to drink. Believe me.” 

“If you’re certain.” She popped open the bottle and took a deep swig of the amber liquid before she handed the bottle to me. It was hefty in my hands. I swirled it around, then lifted it and felt the taste of alcohol on my tongue. 

It burned. 

Margret patted me on the back as I coughed against the fire in my throat. 

“Wine does NOT do this,” I managed to hack. I just barely got the bottle back on the table without spilling it. “Good Lord. What is that shite?” 

“Whiskey, I told you. It’s strong stuff. You ever been drunk before?”

“Some wine at supper, but never anything like that. Is that normal to you?”

“I’ve never had alcohol before.” 

I stared up at her from my toppled position. “How did you do that?” 

“It didn’t hurt.” She smiled faintly. 

“Oh. I see.” I sat back up slowly, looked at the bottle again, then took it back in my hands when another glimpse of my father decided to grace himself with his presence. This draught was a lot less difficult than the first. “Something like that comes in handy, that lack of pain.” 

“It has its moments, I suppose. It kept me going a lot longer than it should have. But then, I can never really tell what might be killing me. There could be something inside me tearing me up and all I would feel is warmth, on a good day. Maybe a tear.” She looked down at her hands. “And I seem to be in the habit of getting hurt.”

“I’ll drink to that.” I tipped the bottle again. She laughed, pulled it back from my reluctant hands and took a nosh of her own. 

“You’re already looking pretty bad and it’s only been a few minutes. You really can’t hold your liquor, can you?”

“Don’t you ever think of drinking to forget for the moment?” 

“I can’t remember much unless I try harder,” she sighed. Her eyes wandered over me, then she moved her chair closer to mine. “I’m sorry you can’t seem to forget the past. But I think it might be the things like that that make you able to do the things you do. You’re going further than a lot of people ever dream of. You’re a strong person, Quill.”

I flinched. “I’m not a strong person. I don’t have the willpower.” 

“Well, then what the hell is all this?” She gestured around the room with the bottle in her hands. “You brought a whole group of girls from the arms of a slaver into the safety of an underground society. You’re singlehandedly keeping them alive and well.” 

“Not really. They helped themselves as much I help them. There’s those scribes. And you, now.” 

“Those scribes do fuck all, and the girls’ hands are tied having to stay down here. You’re the real star of the show, you know. You saved me. You tell me what to do. You pull all the strings.” She wouldn’t look away. Those eyes were massive. Big and green and vibrant. Her cheeks were flushed. “You’re like some kind of leader. No one has that willpower. I didn’t have that willpower. You could have done a whole lot of other things, and you did this. You’re amazing. I mean it.” 

“I think you might be drunk, Margret.” I carefully took the bottle from her hands and looked at the ruddy label. It didn’t say the proof. I was afraid to guess, so I took another drink and held it against my chest. It didn’t taste half bad, actually. “I haven’t done that much. You were right, before. All we’re doing is hiding in the dark. What kind of life is that?” 

“It’s surviving, isn’t it?”

“It’s waiting for death. The girls explore more of these caves every day because they’re tired of staying down here and it’s dangerous. And Sylph acts like some kind of stranger to all of them. Not much better than a noble from the surface, and not the way to make them feel safer and like they’d want to stay here for long. And none of them have even seen the scribes. I speak to them through Sylph, and that’s all the communication we get. I can only imagine what that’s doing for the girls, when they’re already concerned about not getting caught. It’s all a game of miscommunication and a struggle to keep ourselves afloat. What is the point of this survival? What kind of life is this?” I went quiet, waiting for an answer, but when I didn’t get one I turned to see that Margret was staring again. 

“You’re doing it again.” 

“Can’t help it.” She took the bottle back from me. Her eyes were far away. “I never thought I’d see the day that someone would say those things. It’s still so strange, to think that there are people like me. I lived in the castle too long. Do you know what it was like?”

“I can imagine.” 

“Even the humans like to pretend there was nothing wrong. Everyone told me to shut up. To act the part. I couldn’t. I couldn’t be like that.” She gripped the bottle like a vice, her hands clenching and unclenching. That had been the hand with the dagger that now lay hidden inside my desk. “It was sickening.”

“When I was at the Lord court, it was much of the same.” I sat back in the chair. The ceiling was swimming a bit, but I was pleasantly numb. Hearing Margret’s voice seemed to do things to me. There was a calm settling within me. A warmth growing my chest and spreading down to my fingers. “People don’t listen. They pretend like the world is fine. Maybe it’s for their own benefit. They either stand something to gain for staying silent, or fear of too great a loss for saying something. My cousins knew. But they only tried for my own sake. They couldn’t do much with what little power they had, anyways.” They’d tried. I’d spat in their face. So many wrong decisions. So many miscalculations I would never be able to rectify. All in the past. I wondered how long they would haunt me. They’d never want to see my face again, and I couldn’t blame them. 

“You got cousins?” 

“Two, yes.” 

“You never talk much about your past,” she muttered. “I didn’t know you were that premium. Lord Court. That’s quite the pedigree.” 

“I wish I wasn’t.”

“Why not? Isn’t it the brighter the hair, the better the treatment?” It was clear she didn’t believe what she said. Her voice was venom, and she fished in my arms for another drink as she said it. 

“My father is the Right Hand of the Lord. The Lord himself is a coward who hasn’t left his chambers for hundreds of years. So my father and his twin run the place. It’s all nepotism there.” 

“Even better.” 

“And incest. My father is a pedophile.”

Margret dropped the whiskey bottle. I picked it up before it shattered onto the floor, and took another drink in case I started to think about what I’d just said. 

She was opening and closing her mouth when I turned back to her. 

“I… I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s fine. You don’t have to say anything.”

“I feel like I need to.” 

“Probably better that you don’t. I’m not sure how I would react to you saying anything at all. I try to keep the past in the past. Regardless of what happened to me, I’m here now. That man is a world away.” 

“Did… Did he…”

“Yes.”

“Quill.” 

I took another deep drink, wiped my mouth, and slammed the bottle down on the table between us. 

“Margret.”

She closed her mouth. The ceiling continued to swim, My head was constantly drifting to the right and I kept overcorrecting it. With every growing moment, I was finding the silence further unbearable. 

“What about you?” I slurred. 

“Huh?” 

“Anything happen to you?”

“Oh. No. Not like that.” 

I bit my tongue. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have… Shouldn’t have said something like that.” 

“I feel like I should be the one apologizing.” She tilted forward to lean against my shoulder. I sighed. I was grateful she was there, at least. Now I didn’t feel like I was falling. 

“There’s nothing to apologize for. The past is the past. If I keep thinking ‘bout it, there’s no point. What about a future?” 

“This is a future.” 

“There’s more than this to life.” I looked up at her. “You’d make a good Queen, Margret.” 

She stared at me. Then she laughed into my shoulder, and pushed me halfway over the chair. I had to grab onto her to keep from falling over. 

“Hah, what kind of joke is that? Blimey, are we ‘bouta start our own kingdom?” 

I nudged her back. “There’s things in those scrolls. Stories and ideas and things the Royals don’t want us to know. Like how they can be killed.” 

“You’re so drunk it’s cute.” She pushed back again, and I let my head fall back against her chest. 

“Listen,” I said. “You and I. We could do it. We could try.” 

“Try what?” Her face was flushed dark with alcohol. Her eyes had gone hazy. 

“Fighting back.” 

“Like… Like a coup.”

“Like a coup,” I agreed.

She furrowed her eyebrows as if she were deep in thought. As she did, her hands went to my hair, brushing it back. I admit, I couldn’t really see well with all the straw in my face. And her fingers were cold against my own fevered cheeks. 

“Is that what you’ve been thinking of this whole time?”

“Yes.” 

“That’s crazy, Quill.” 

“Is it?” I hesitated. “That’s what I thought too.” 

She smiled. “Why would you want me to be Queen? I’m not a good person as it is.” 

“You don’t even realize what you’re capable of. I saw it. All we have to do is hone those public speaking skills of yours, and we could rally people to our cause.” 

“What people?” She slurred. Her hands fumbled for the bottle on the table and she took a drink. 

“Humans. Nobles like us.” 

“There are no nobles like us.” 

“There have to be. We can’t be the only ones. Even if we were, there are so many more humans than nobility. So what if they’re stronger? We can be smarter.” 

“So, you’re gonna get all the humans to listen to us. With me. A noble. Who’s enslaving them.” 

“You’re not enslaving them.” 

“Take another drink, Quill, this doesn’t sound crazy enough yet.” My throat clenched as I took the bottle, sat up and swallowed a large mouthful of the burning alcohol. 

“Right,” I sighed. “I suppose it’s insane.” I couldn’t read the label anymore. Was this whiskey? Could alcohol do something like this? I couldn’t really understand what was real and what wasn’t anymore. I could remember nightmares but all of them were so faded that they seemed more like caricatures. I wanted to laugh at them.

“Of course it is.” She dropped her chin onto my shoulder. When I glanced at her, I was struck by her expression. “But I’d still do it anyways.” 

“You would?” 

“I’d do anything for you, Quill.” 

My heart tightened. “Thank you, Margret. I appreciate it.”

And then she kissed me. 

Her lips were chapped, hard, and rough on mine. Clumsy. She was almost desperate, the way she moved her lips, trying to part mine. Alarm bells went off in my head but even they seemed numb in the moment. All I could feel was there was a large body on mine and I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, but it smelled like blood and whiskey and tasted like… Like… I didn’t want to think about it. It was like a bruise was left on me when she pulled away. Her eyes were clouded, her mouth parted and panting. 

I wasn’t drunk enough for this.

“So we should think of a plan if you were to agree to help me,” I said quickly as I put the bottle between me and her. Margret’s eyes widened as she seemed to realize what she’d just done, and she quickly veered to the other side as she inspected the walls. But the walls were spinning much more strongly than before and after another sip of the stuff I was struggling to find a reason to find my stomach so upset at the thought of what she’d just done. It was there somewhere. Somewhere far, far away, someone was laughing at me. 

Within moments, she was as close as before, peering at me with those damned green eyes. I wanted to shuffle away. But she didn’t mean it. She didn’t know. 

“You didn’t yell at me?” She asked.

“I need to drink more.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“It’s alright.” 

“No but I mean it. I’m sorry.” She sighed, and pressed her face into my shoulder. “I dunno what to think. I… I really like you, Quill.”

I shifted out of the way. “Alright.” 

“I mean it, though. Really.” I tried to ignore how hurt she sounded. Instead of looking at her face, I took another drink. I knew that if I tried to stand up, I wouldn’t be making it much more than a few feet. 

“I think you like the things I say,” I muttered. “But I… I can’t. With that. Not anymore.”

“Because of your dad?” As soon as she said it, she knew she’d made a mistake. But instead of the constant apologies, she held her tongue. I was grateful for that.

“Because of a lot of things. We’re nobles, right?” I lilted my head at her. “You’re a Queen noble. I’m a Lord noble. We don’t mix.”

“Says who?”

“Society? I dunno.” I swished around the bottle with increasing discomfort. “I mean, what if we had a hybrid child?” 

I looked up to see Margret as red as her hair. 

“Huh?” 

“I didn’t –“ I flushed. “I didn’t mean it like that.” 

“No, no I get it.” 

“It’s just what they say.”

“Uh huh.” 

“I wasn’t actually thinking of that.”

“I understand.”

“Margret, I can’t do things like that.” I dropped my head down. “I don’t want to disappoint you, but I’m not ready for anything. And I’m flattered and all. But something like that isn’t going t’ work.”

“I’m sorry.” She looked like she was about to get up. Her legs were poised for it. And she made the motion, like she was going to leave. I rushed to grab her hand and keep her there. I needed to make up my mind. I was only making things worse for myself. And she was confused, lost and confused, staring down at me like I was the kind of messiah that help her find her purpose in life. I was just a man. And not a very good one. 

“You don’t have to leave.” 

“I’m making you uncomfortable.”

“You’re… you’re not. And we shouldn’t waste the last of the alcohol, right? There’s still half a bottle left over.”

She was hopeful. I was probably giving her the wrong idea. My hands were shaking. She was swimming through the air. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. But if she walked through that door, then I’d be alone. And even now those eyes were on me, soft green eyes. Pretty green eyes. A pretty face. A kind face. She’d make a good face. That was the kind of face that children would flock to. The kind of face that led battles in stories. 

Her hand was warm. 

She slowly sat back down, her eyes on my grip, calculating in her head. “Why don’t you tell me more about these plans of yours then?” She finally said. “Maybe they are crazy. But they intrigue me.” 

“This world is broken, is it not?” I told her. “Maybe it needs something to change it. If we keep going through the same thing every day of our lives, then it needs something to kick it into motion. But more than anything, how else would we be able to save those in slavery than if we were to reverse the ruling completely? That’s going to take time. And power. So we’d need a process. Steps. And I was thinking about those too.”

We talked. And we talked. And we ended up on the bed somewhere near the end of the bottle. I could feel her arms around me, her body pressed against me, her hands firmly on the last dregs of the whiskey we’d learned to love. Even with my eyes closed, the world still turned. But at least it wasn’t stagnant. It was moving. 

“Hey, Quill…” She whispered against my ear, taking me out of a monologue that had turned into meaningless noise.

“Hm?” 

She pressed a drunken kiss to my forehead. “You smell good.” 

“You’re drunk,” I sighed. 

“Do I smell good?”

“Stop asking questions. We should sleep this off. I can’t even think straight anymore.”

“But do I smell good?”

“Of course you smell good.”

“I thought I smelled like blood still. It’s hard to get it out of the fabric.”

“You don’t. It’s okay.” 

“Good. Can’t be a rebellion’s figurehead smelling like blood.” She giggled against my neck. 

I chuckled. “I mean it. You could be great. Don’t worry about it.” 

“I’m never going to stop worrying as long as you worry. But just point the way. I’ll do whatever. It sounds like a good plan.” 

“The real question is how we’re going to get everyone else to agree.” 

“Just do what you did with me.”

“I didn’t do anything with you.” She snorted. 

“Made me like you…” She mumbled into my shoulder. I flinched at the touch. In the brief flashes of sobriety, my throat was constricting against the touch of her around me. But then drunkenness took me again, and with it the exhaustion I’d been keeping at bay these past few days. I was drunk. And she smelled good. And she was soft. And she was Margret. She wasn’t anyone else. 

We knew each other. I wanted to believe there was nothing behind that smile. I wanted to believe that she was cooing and acting like a school girl in love because that was what she was. And I wanted to believe that someone as strong as that that could keep me safe, somewhere in the back of my mind. Maybe she could. Maybe I had to try trusting again. Everything in my stomach wanted to fight back against that. Every part of me wanted to run. When I was sober, that is. 

But in this drunken haze, there was a girl in my bed pressing kisses to my face as I fell asleep. And it wasn’t so bad, I supposed. Maybe the dreams wouldn’t be bad tonight. 

In the morning, we’d plan. And I’d try to forget that this had ever happened.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Muse for this chapter:
> 
> Hearts and Colors - Lion : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzcQxRr1cSw  
> Tommee Profit - Sound of War : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4hlAsmfXco
> 
> LONG ASS CHAPTER IS LOOOOOOOOOONG

MARGRET 

I think it was the way he looked when he was sleeping that got me the most. That mess of hay that went every which way on his head. Freckles that dotted his cheeks, those pretty dark flecks on warm toned skin. His chest rising slowly up and down, his hands carefully placed over top of each other. I couldn’t help myself. He looked so helpless. Against my better judgement, I stroked his hair. Trying to fix that mane of his was impossible, but I wasn’t really trying. It was more fun to watch it go down with some pressure only to flick back up again right back to where it had been. It felt like hay too. He needed to take better care of himself. But that was easier said than done. 

I wondered what he was thinking about. I doubted he gave himself a break, even in his sleep. Maybe he dreaming of the future. Another far-fetched idea that would solve all the world’s problems. Maybe in this one he was an all-knowing ruler able to bring the old Royals to their knees. He’d bring all of those old stories back to life and make it a story again. Alice had to be there too, of course. He’d bring her back from the dead or wherever she’d gone to and let Quill continue to rule with her own personal blessing. I wouldn’t put it past him. And it was a sweet thought. I smiled as I twirled a finger around one of his many stray hairs. 

The alcohol had really knocked him out, but I hadn’t expected to be the one to wake up first. I’d had my fair share of seeing the effect whiskey could have on those that overindulged, but I seemed alright. Maybe this wasn’t as strong as I thought. Maybe Quill just really needed the sleep. God knew how much he worked himself to the bone. I’d lost track of the provisional missions already, but he had to be the one carefully spinning everything together to make sure they worked. And alongside that, he was the only one that Sylph talked to. And the only one the girls trusted enough to go looking for their loved ones. And the only one that knew as much as he did of the old Wonderland. The only one that bothered to learn. So much intelligence, and so much pressure for one man. One pretty man. And he was pretty, wasn’t he. Maybe he wasn’t that conventionally attractive character that made the birds swoon over each other in the court, but there was a charm to him. I could see it in the way he slept. A long alcohol-driven unconsciousness had turned into a soft, sweet sleep that had made him so unlike his stoic self. Soft. 

I thought a little about the future now, thanks to him. I’d come in here with memories I’d desperately wanted to throw away, and he’d done better than I’d ever imagined. It wasn’t the alcohol that had put anything ill out of my head. It was the way he talked about things. The worlds he spun in my head. The plans he came up with. The ideas we could accomplish, if only I kept listening to him. We could do it, if we just gathered the girls together and convinced them that this could actually happen. All he’d have to do is coach me, and I could play the part. He’d do the rest. I just needed to make for myself a persona that could draw all those around us that thought we had even an inkling of a chance. He’d even given logistics. I couldn’t recall them, but I remember them being good. A pretty plan, I thought at the time. Angie would never go for it, but it was certainly pretty. And to hear about his reforms… It was a dream. He was a dream. He couldn’t be real.

There was a man lying beside me. I could feel his body heat against mine. We were achingly close. Was it presumptuous of me to imagine what kind of things he was into? What his tastes were? What were his favorite foods? His favorite stories? Did he prefer the summer climate of the city, or the fall of his old court? 

I frowned and paused my hand. The last night was a little hazy, but I still remembered most of it. I thought I wouldn’t. But I suppose the alcohol hadn’t been enough. I’d learned more than I maybe should have. I wondered if I should pretend that I’d learned nothing, but that didn’t seem truthful. And I wanted to be truthful to him. If we were going to be this way, I wanted him to know things. I wanted to be able to reveal myself, fully. I’d thought we’d known each other in the time he’d spent taking care of me, and on some level, we did. But the reasons for it, those were still too hard to talk about sometimes. He always held his tongue, and I had never asked out of courtesy. Now I knew why. 

He’d looked so heartbroken when he spoke. It seemed to harm him, just to say the words. Of course, it had been the furthest thing from my mind. I had thought I’d never learn, and I was content with that. The past was the past. Until it wasn’t, and it made everything one did a chore of the utmost caliber. No wonder he was so afraid. No wonder he couldn’t be touched. No wonder he was the way that he was. No wonder he… He’d been so nervous when I’d kissed him. I’d been so stupid. Far too presumptuous. We’d have to take things slow. I’d have to be careful. Gentle. I’d do what I’d need to. And I’d make sure he was safe. No one would ever touch him again. I’d make sure of it. 

If Quill trusted me with that information, then I had to be mature enough to hold onto it for him. And I would. I would be a locked box if that’s what he wanted me to be. He had been drunk of course, I wasn’t stupid. People said things they didn’t mean to when they were drunk. He’d been vulnerable, and he said something I don’t think he’d meant to say. But in the end, out of everyone, he’d told me. And that was important. I mattered to him. I’d do what I have to do. 

He made a soft snuffling noise in his sleep. My smile widened. 

I was still petting his hair when he began to groan. It was a pained noise. I pulled away quickly as he started to wrestle with the blankets.

“Morning,” I said cheerfully. He reached up to grab hold of his head. His eyes were slits. 

“Loud…” He muttered. He rubbed his temples and stuck out his tongue to lick chapped lips. “Where’s the water – the basin – is there any left?” 

“Oh, right.” I was gone from his side and back in moments with a pewter cup of well water. The taste wasn’t ideal, but it had been heaven to me when I’d woken up. “Here. You must be parched.” 

He groaned an incomprehensible word as he grabbed it and gulped it down like it was ambrosia. But he winced as he tried to swallow. He only managed half the glass before he handed it back to me none-too-gently so he could curl over his stomach and grip his head in his hands. 

“This headache,” he muttered. “God, my mouth.” 

“What’s wrong?” I asked. This hadn’t been my reaction. I reached out a hand to touch him, but he flinched away. My heart skipped a beat. Alright, I’d been too presumptuous again. Slower. I could do slower.

“Didn’t you feel like this when you woke up?” He glanced up at me. His eyes opened a fraction wider, but the dim light of the candle seemed like too much, even for him. “It’s like something is trying to claw out of my head and mouth at the same time.” 

“I just felt a little thirsty. I don’t…” I bit my lip. Ah. Now it made sense. “I’m not sure I get the same reactions as others do. If it’s pain, well. I doubt I’m going to feel it.” 

“Right, right…” He lay back against the creaking cot with another long-winded groan. “I feel like I could sleep for another three hours, at least.” His eyes fluttered closed. 

“Oh… That’s alright, if you need to sleep.”

After a moment, he opened his eyes again. They were a little wider this time, and staring up at the ceiling as he licked over his lips again. Slowly they trailed down until they settled on my awkward perching on the edge of his cot. He furrowed his eyebrows. I couldn’t tell if they were from thought, or if he really was just that pained. I’d overdone it on the alcohol. He must have been trying to match me. Now he’d be paying for it. Next time I’d bring something weaker. A fortified wine, perhaps for him. Or mead, I’d heard good things about mead. I had sneaky fingers. A cloak. I could get him anything he wanted. 

He finally broke the silence. “What happened last night…” 

“Oh, it’s okay.” I flushed. I’d expected he bring up the conversation, but I hadn’t expected him to do it so soon. No point in hiding it. “I don’t hold anything against you. I promise, I won’t say a word to anyone. I promise. It’s all safe with me.” 

“No, not that.” Oh. Well. I suppose that was a yoke off my shoulders.

“Then… The plans?” I brightened. “I still think they sound brilliant, even if we’ve got everything stacked against us. I’ll do what you ask. Anything you need. We should tell Angie, though. Perhaps we could hold a meeting, involve everyone. We’d run it by Angie and a few others first, and if they go for it, tell the rest. Maybe the underground scholars might even talk to us, if they’re already helping us this much. Their allegiances already seem to be in our favor, if a little hazy. You never know.” 

He looked even more pained than before. His legs slowly curled up until he was hugging his knees, green in the face. 

“No,” he muttered. “About us.” 

“Hm?” My heart was already pounding. Everything was suddenly moving a mile a minute as I waited for him to speak. What was he going to say? Was he worried? He didn’t have to be. I’d be good. As good as I could be. I’d keep him safe. He didn’t need to worry. I promised I would be whatever he needed. He had to know that. He knew me. He didn’t have to be afraid.

“We shouldn’t have done that.” 

“Huh?” I smiled. 

“We shouldn’t have… Done those things. Or stayed together, like that. It’s not… There’s too many…” he rubbed his temples as he searched for the word. “Complications. We shouldn’t. We need to maintain a professional relationship if we’re going to go forward with any plans. We need to have each other’s backs without the drama of a… A relationship. And it wouldn’t be viable, regardless. We’d have no future in this society. It’s just – maybe you’ve never seen it, but two different nobles, it’s just, it’s not done. And you’re a lovely person, but I’m not, ah…” He trailed off as he struggled to word his thoughts. “I… I ‘m not able to do that. I can’t do that. Not anymore.” I noticed the way his hands started to shake. “I don’t know what got into me. I apologize for my lapse in judgment. I was very drunk. But please don’t do that again. I would prefer if you just… Didn’t touch me. At all. Before, it was different. But now…” He sounded like he was going to choke. 

“Ah.” 

He pressed his face into his knees and grimaced. He still seemed half asleep. “Sorry if this sounds contradictory to my previous actions.” 

“No. No, it’s alright. I understand.” I rose from his bed slowly, then grabbed the empty bottle of whiskey from the side of the bed. “I apologize for what I did. I didn’t realize.” 

I picked my way carefully around the room as I headed for the door. My hand was turning the rusted handle when I heard the croak of his voice. 

“Margret?” 

“Yes?” I said. I kept my eyes on the open hall in front of me. 

He was quiet. “I’m sorry. If you thought I led you on. I didn’t mean to. I know that we’ve been through much of the same, and I didn’t realize that I’d been - … I’ve been told before that I give off this, this aura. Of being… Interested, in that sort of thing. Maybe I just give off the mannerism of someone like that.” 

“I don’t think that.” 

“I seemed easy. A… A slut. It’s happened before. And I didn’t push you away like I did the others.” 

“You don’t. You aren’t.” 

“Still, I led you on-”

“I don’t think of you that way, Quill. Please, rest. You need your mind to be at its best. Its our greatest asset. And you work yourself too hard. If we’re going to tell the others about your idea, then you need to be in the right mindset to do it.”

“I suppose you’re right.” He was tired now. His voice wavered. “I’m sorry, Margret.”

“Have a good sleep.” I closed the door behind me before he could say anything more. I don’t think I could have handled it if he did. 

I kept my face down to avoid meeting the faces of the girls that passed by the catacombs. Their giggling faded when they glanced my way. They gave was a stiff nod of their head before they resumed their chatter and followed the lit braziers towards the dining hall. I didn’t mind. I wouldn’t have been able to properly greet any of them anyways. 

Honestly, this was just inappropriate. I had to be better than this. I couldn’t be some stupid girl. A crush. What was I, a child? There were lives in the balance. These people depended on us right now. And with Quill’s plans, we’d be in the midst of something far greater. And here I was, thinking that some kind of romance could be maintained on the brink of war. 

I slammed the door shut to my chambers the moment I was inside. Only then I fall back against the door holding onto that empty bottle with my knife hand, clenching it as tight as anything. What was I thinking? What kind of person was I to suggest such a thing? The face he’d made. It was stuck replaying in my mind over and over, that same disgusted face. It had to have been disgust. And fear. He trusted me out of everyone because of what we’d been through, and I abused that. I’d been such a fool. So stupid. 

God, maybe he thought I’d wanted something out of that whole scenario. Coming to his room with a bottle pretending like it was some kind of celebration when really I was trying to get into his trousers. That’s what I must have looked like. I’d tried to sound as cheerful as I could, I tried to keep everything to myself, but I bet I’d come off as some kind of seducer. Quill must have been terrified. I’d held him all night. I’d betrayed his trust. I kissed him. I’d touched him. And he was too drunk to resist me. 

And here I was just wanting to forget. 

I held up the muddled bottle and felt the bile rise to my throat. Asentual was older now. A strong young man with a sexual appetite unlike any other, even for a boy his age. An insatiable monster who seemed to find pleasure in causing chaos in the palace. He was a savant in all respects with his tutoring, but completely impulsive. They said he loved to seduce married women. Watch the slaves being punished in the stocks for trying to run. The boy was a hot blooded Wonderlander, that was for certain. He whispered in the Queen’s ear all of the conquerings he’d done for her. 

I barely made it to the empty basin to retch up the last of the alcohol in my system. 

When I pulled away, I didn’t bother to look into that crooked looking glass. I cleaned my face, threw a few strands of hair away from my face, and tried not to notice their color. I’d seen enough red. 

I hadn’t meant to overhear them. It was just another conversation in the trade district, like any other. But then they’d said that dreaded word, and I was too curious to stop myself. Asentual was a name that struck a deep respect in that fruit peddler and court noble. The elderly king Noble, his apron stained with pear juice, had paused in his argument with a slave to talk at length with the Queen noble that had a first-hand account of the strange boy the Queen had been rearing. He’d stuck out like a shining light, the redhead had said. A bit off the wall, bit rough around the edges, but a solid Wonderlander through and through. Not only that, but the new Mad Hatter himself. Even the hereditary title brought with it a great prestige that set him apart from all the others. The Queen herself revered the boy, and so did most of the court. You get in his good graces, and it’s like you’ve gotten into the Queen’s. She just loves his stories. Might even let him go out on his own from the Capital to pick up a few more. Some say he’s interested in the slaving business. Imagine what kind of good public relations move that would be for the slaver economy, to have a celebrity like the Hatter supporting the profession? Imagine what kind of good move it might be for one such as himself to get to know that boy, be the one to teach him the waves of a well-to-do slaver. He’ll grow into a fine man, soon enough. Just make sure you hide your wife and daughter from a kid like that, haha. He’s a fan of punishment, sure enough. Loves seeing the girls out by the barracks getting a good horning. 

And then the slave had left the conversation with her hands quickly dropping the oranges. The peddler had yelled after her rushing off to pick those damned things back up, apologized to the court noble, and the two had gone on to go about their day. 

I’d picked up that bottle of whiskey without really thinking about it. My hands just found the bottle nestled at a street corner vendor who claimed it to be particularly strong. I suppose I’d seen enough nobles pissed off their arses drowning their regret in revelry to know the drill. If that was would take the ache away, so be it. Whatever would take away this haunted headache. But I couldn’t seem to find it within myself to do it alone. 

Maybe I should have just stayed in my room. Perhaps then I would saved myself the hassle. 

I kept seeing his face. Poor Quill. God, what a mess I’d made. I was such a fool. That awkward tension…

I swallowed the lump in my throat, and took a breath. I didn’t stay feeling sorry for myself much longer. 

Soon enough I was carefully fixing my hair. I focused on that looking glass with all the attention I could muster. I placed the whiskey bottle by the basin, and let those memories fall away. They had to go where the other ones lay. It was better off that way. That Lord noble somehow seemed to function knowing all that he did, and I wasn’t sure how. I couldn’t seem to work without letting them all fall away into the ether. At least my mind was used to it. I could pretend that they didn’t exist. Live in the moment. Let it wash over me. And in the morning, I’d be a different person. 

I needed to focus on the task at hand. There was work still to be done. 

I was called upon not long after, walking down a corridor in an effort to find the source of that dripping water. A figure approached in the dark with a torch, and before long I could make out that set of wide eyes that seemed to question in silence why I was so far down in the depths. I was caught. Quickly, I placed my hands behind my back and smiled. “Something amiss, Winnie?” 

She returned the smile with a wide-eyed stare. “Quill wants us in the dining hall.”

I ignored the thrum in my stomach and doused my own torch to save fuel. “Did he say what for?”

“No, but he did say he needed you specifically. For something he’s been planning, I’d imagine. He’s been a bit quiet on that front, with all of his research. It’s chilly down here, you know. My feet are freezing. I don’t know how you manage.”

“Oh,” I breathed out a sigh. Of course. I wasn’t thinking straight. 

Winnie led the way back and I stayed close, the both of us in what I thought was companionable silence. So, Quill was already going through with telling the others. It had nothing to do with us. That wouldn’t have made any sense anyways. It wasn’t like he was going to kick me out of the tunnels for coming onto him, was here? Oh, god, what if I’d forced him and now he was going to exile me. Had I forced him? I hadn’t asked to kiss him. He was going to hate me for that. Maybe. He didn’t seem to – he blamed himself. Right, that was it. And I’d just promised myself I’d leave this behind. Why was this so hard? 

“Do you know what Quill’s been planning?” 

I paused, relieved to not be mulling stupid ideas over and over in my head. “Yes, I believe so.” 

“Can you tell me then?” She blinked up at me with wide eyes. “I don’t really like being in the dark.” 

“I think it might be better for Quill to explain it,” I muttered.

“But you’re so much better at explaining things. Quill is boring.” She sighed and slumped her shoulders. “He never stops talking about the background on things to get to the point. I always end up leaving the conversation before he gets to where he wants to.” 

I smiled weakly. “Well, Quill just likes to make everyone understand everything clearly so there’s no miscommunication. He’s a very thorough person.” I coughed. “So how are the other girls?” 

“He’s a thorough person, alright. But he’s also so incredibly secretive. I still don’t know anything about him. He’s a lovely man despite being a noble, but he won’t even say anything to me. To any of us, really. Except maybe Angie.” She lowered her eyes. “It’s almost like he think he can hide the fact that someone has hurt him the same way someone’s hurt us before. I respect it, but I still feel like he doesn’t trust us somehow. I trust him…” She trailed off. “The girls are fine. They’re bored of being down here and not seeing the sun for months. People see things sometimes, down here. Go stir crazy. Your food was welcome. And all that charcoal you managed to get.” 

I laughed nervously. “Oh, not a problem. I should really go on another run for charcoal. The braziers run out too quickly and we keep expanding out past where the scribes replenish them.” 

“Well, the girls like to explore. I don’t know why. This place had never felt any less terrifying to me. It’s like I hear things sometimes. Water dripping, you know? So, what do you think of Quill?” 

“What?” 

She sighed impatiently. “You can see something wrong with him, right? There has to be something there. Like there’s a war inside his head. He wants to talk, but he won’t say anything. I think he’s holding everything back. Must be stifling.” 

“I don’t feel comfortable with this conversation.” 

“Did he tell you?” Her eyes widened.

“No,” I lied. It wasn’t a very good one. I was chewing my lip and tried to think of something to break the tension, but my mind drew a blank. 

“Right.” Her voice was monotone. “I see.” 

“Yeah,” I said quickly. “Sorry about that.” 

“It’s not fair,” she sighed. “I bet he told you, when he hasn’t even known you as long as us. It’s like you mean more just because you’re a noble… No offense.” 

“None taken. But he – he really hasn’t told me anything. So. I’m in the same boat. The only reason he interacts with me is because I can get things done for you all. I’m a tool. And I’m alright with being one.” I smiled hesitantly, trying to extend the olive branch out. I think she decided she would believe it. Because she finally smiled at me, and nudged my shoulder with a faint whine. 

“So we’re both dealing with some tall dark and mysterious stranger that refuses to reveal his history then.” 

“I’m taller than Quill.” 

“It’s a turn of phrase.” 

“Oh.” 

She giggled. “It’s alright. You know, I don’t know much about you either. Are you a tall dark and handsome stranger too?” 

“Handsome?” 

“Turn of phrase.” 

“Ah… Well, I’m an open book. You can feel free to ask away. I don’t want to keep you in the dark.” 

Her smile faded. 

“Did you really kill people?”

I choked. 

Winnie stopped in the middle of the dark corridor to pat me on the back as I coughed up the saliva I’d swallowed down the wrong hole. 

“You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to,” she offered. “I just… The way that you came in at the very beginning, Quill carrying you covered in blood and looking like a drowned rat, but then there was that dagger he had to pry out of your hand. He literally ripped skin from that thing. And the way you acted, the things you said… It seemed like you were dangerous at the time. It was no wonder the rest of us were afraid. I trust you now, but if you say you’re an open book, then I want to know.” 

“No… No, it’s alright.” I rubbed my neck as I slowly stood back up. “I just… I didn’t expect you to ask about that. But you’re right.” I bit my lip. “I did some terrible things, when I went mad. But that madness was no excuse. I hurt people. I killed people.” 

I hurt to say. It felt wrong. 

Her wide eyes looked luminous in the light of the torch. “So you really were a serial murderer. How taboo.” 

I flushed. “I don’t think much about it anymore. It seems like another life. And I know that’s not true, I should take responsibility for the things I did, and I do. And a lot of innocent people lost their lives because of me. I just… I find focusing on it doesn’t help anything. So I put it out of my mind. I barely remember any of it.” 

“Who did you kill, nobles?” 

“Mostly. Not always.” 

“Mostly,” she echoed. “Mostly nobles…” She lapsed back into silence. We continued walking, and for a moment I thought she’d finally dropped the topic. But then she spoke again and I twitched. “Wait,” she said. She narrowed her eyes. “People would talk about something in the brothel sometimes. Dozens of nobles would show up in the morning pale as the grave with gouges and slices all over. There were plenty of witnesses, but no one ever caught the man. They said he was like a shadow himself. There was nothing that anyone could ever say define him, other than this knife he always used. I always thought the nobles were just as crazy as they always were with talk like that. They loved drama. But then there’s you. With your strange cloak that hides you in plain sight, that knife of yours that looks just evil, and that madness you came in with.” She blinked up at me. I fully expected fear. But her eyes were glittering, as big as moons. “You were their killer, weren’t you?” 

“… Guilty as charged, I suppose.” I didn’t like the way she was looking at me. 

Her lips twitched upward. “Those nobles hated you. You terrified them. The guards were tripled in the dead of night and they still never caught you. You had the entirety of the Capital in shambles, you know. I can’t believe it.” 

“Can we talk about something else?” 

“But you’re a legend!” She exclaimed. She took my arm in hers and gestured wildly with her torch. “You’ve killed notorious slave traders, pompous brothel frequenters, all sorts of the crass underbelly of nobility! Those people will never walk the streets feeling safe ever again because of you!” 

“I also killed perfectly innocent people. Humans.” Now my stomach really began to churn. I pulled away from her but I had nowhere to go. I ended up pressed against the side of the tunnel. I was being cornered. “I’d really we rather talk about something else.” 

“But – but –“ 

“Winnie, please,” I begged. “What I did was, well, wrong. I didn’t discriminate against who I hurt. Taking a life is… It’s just wrong. I didn’t have that right. Those people might have been pure evil, and maybe I did some good in the world taking them down, but I didn’t do it with any real intention. I didn’t care. And because of that, so many others got caught in the fray.” 

“Those monsters didn’t have the right to hurt us, either,” she muttered. But she let it drop, thank God. We went back to navigating the passages upward towards the main hub of the Rabbit Hole. 

The dining room was prepared. 

Quill had his scrolls laid out in front of him with a face of stone, standing with his arms braced against the table. He seemed to be organizing them impulsively. His hands refused to still. When he looked up to see me, it was with that same chilled, determined expression. I had to accept that, as much as it hurt. We had to be professional. 

“I’m glad you could join us.” 

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” I tried to sound encouraging. I don’t think I did a very good job. 

The dining room was nearly empty. Angie stood beside him at the table, looking over his shoulder to try to parse what kind of madness he’d come up with through his research. Mary sat near the fire with her baby, but her thoughts were focused elsewhere, mesmerized by the flames. Jessie creaked back and forth on an old wooden chair. All eyes were on Quill. The only sound was the crackling of the fire. All eyes were on Quill and I. And Sylph. 

I didn’t like that she was here. 

“Is that everyone then?” The Duchess noble asked with a pleasant smile. Standing at the left side of Quill’s crouched form, she was a frosted sculpture among the rest of us. I watched her carefully. She always seemed so oddly familiar. “Shall we get started then?” 

“These scrolls are meaningless, Quill. What is this about?” Angie demanded. “We still have plenty of supplies after Margret’s run. None of the girls are reporting any problems. What is this announcement that you couldn’t just tell me personally?”

“We’re fine on all fronts when it comes to supplies. There’s nothing that requires your immediate attention. I’ve come up with a suggestion, as it were. This is going to be difficult to explain. Please bear with me.” He cleared his throat, glanced down at his parchment, then looked to me. I sank back against Winnie. This was his story to tell. The girl peeked out from behind me. He sighed, turned his attention to the rest of the group, and began to speak. 

“Alright. I suppose, I’ll start with this. Wonderland is broken. I am sure you are all aware of that. The things that the Queen gets away with is simply unacceptable. But we can’t say any of that up topside, can we?” 

Sylph tilted her head to the side. I kept a careful eye on her. 

He cleared his throat again. “I’ve been doing research on the history of Wonderland to get as much unbiased background information as I could. There’s so much of it that appears to have been rewritten to accommodate the Royals without questioning their authority or history. They did well to uproot our own history. But the past, when one goes back far enough, starts to make recent history seem nonsensical in comparison. And there is information here that could change the course of history, in these old parchments.” 

“He’s doing it again,” Winnie muttered beside me. 

“Get to the point, Quill,” Angie said gruffly. “You’re wasting all of our valuable time. None of this pertains to US.” 

“I’ve learned that the Royals can supposedly be killed, is what I’m saying.” He looked up at all of us. “Not just a legend. But an actual reality.” 

None of us spoke. We all looked between each other. I could see the pale concern in some of their faces. The exhilaration of Winnie’s. The anger of Angie’s. And then there was Sylph. I couldn’t read her if I tried. 

But Quill needed help. A direction, at least. He was floundering. 

“Alright,” I said. “And what do you want to do with that information?” 

“I want to use it to protect more people,” he said graciously. “Right now, we have a little more than a dozen people here under my watch that need our protection because they’re fugitive slaves. Just because they’re human. We have our loved ones here protected, but there will always be more. Everyone knows someone out there that is still under the shackles, someone that they can’t reach. It isn’t fair to keep them suffering when we use resources to help them.” 

“We don’t have the resources,” Mary chimed in. She held her baby tighter. “We barely have the resources to keep ourselves alive. And this isn’t a permanent solution. We’ll have to leave here eventually. I want my baby to be able to see the sun.”

“We don’t have them, yet. If we want to rescue more people from slavery and subjugation, then we’re going to need more power than what we already have. It will take much to be able to get people like Isabelle out of the castle, if that is where she still is.” 

“So that’s what all of this is about,” Angie scoffed. “Isabelle.” 

Quill frowned. “It’s more than that. You gave me the trust to be able to take you to somewhere safe. I am saying I don’t believe the job should be finished. What we are doing is just surviving…” He looked down at the scrolls. “If we had the strength, the power, I could help you all live. Not just survive, but truly live. As people I want that for you. For everyone. I’ve… I’ve been in less than ideal situations myself, and I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone. I can only imagine how much worse it’s been for all of you. We can’t forget what happened to Evaline. I know we don’t talk about her, but she was a person that suffered for you all. She suffered for me too. And she shouldn’t have had to. I don’t want that to ever have to happen again. That was a helplessness no one should have.”

Winnie coughed. 

He looked up as if woken from a dream. “We’re going to need manpower if we’re going to accomplish this rescue of more humans. But I haven’t come to you with a problem. I’ve come to you with a possible solution. I have ideas for how to accomplish what I’m proposing.” He trailed off again. So uncertain. His voice was too quiet. “And… And in the end, if we can find a way to gain strength, to gain manpower, to help the humans, then what’s to stop us from using it for more than just help? Why can’t we destroy this system at the source? Why can’t we stop it from needing intervention ever again?”

“Quill,” Angie began quietly. It was strange to hear her voice that soft. She smoothly drew closer, and pushed one of Quill’s scrolls out of the way. She took him by the shoulder. I watched him flinch, but she didn’t change her expression. “Be careful what you’re suggesting here. It sounds like insanity.” 

“That’s why I’m explaining it to all of you before I decide to make a fool of myself in front of the others. This is not only a big step, what I am proposing is an entire… A coup,” he finally said. “I’m proposing a rebellion, a mutiny to take back Wonderland. And bring it back to what it should have been in the first place. Those Royals should never have been put in power in the first place. They broke this world down into a diluted mess of what it used to be. If we can remove them, we might be able to intrinsically change Wonderland for the better. We could reverse the rot. The stagnation. Maybe even the magic, if these scrolls are right. For what good it’s worth.”

“Overthrowing the monarchy?” 

“I don’t think there’s any other way for us to protect all of our loved ones.” He dipped his head. “Angie, I know that these girls here aren’t the only ones that are suffering right now. There are more. There are always more. Humans, and perhaps nobles like myself that suffer because of dominant noble sentiments. These rulings and ideas are allowed to fester because of the Royals that propagate them. People die because these laws continue to be upheld by tyrants. Vice is only ever going to beget vice. If we could cut this off at the source, if we could sever the chain that makes things worse-“ 

“Why is she here?” Jessie pointed at Sylph.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Winnie muttered. 

Quill’s face hardened. His lip was quivering. “I spoke with Sylph.” He said louder.

I furrowed my eyebrows. 

“When?” I asked. 

“Later,” was all he said.

Sylph smiled. “Is it alright if I speak?” 

“Say your piece,” Angie muttered. 

The Duchess noble nodded her head. “I represent a possibility. Quill wants power. You only have two nobles on your side. The scribes have not been particularly forthcoming because they are not known to get in the way of political squabbles. I apologize if that was not made clear before, but they were afraid what kind of power the Queen might bring down upon their heads if they were found allying themselves with fugitives.” 

Angie swore under her breath, and my teeth clenched. 

“But Quill’s ideas are charming. Perhaps the scribes won’t have much to say on the matter, we may never know. They are after all, little more than older gentlemen with knowledge that Quill has already gleaned. What kind of warriors would those be?” She shrugged. “I may be the scribe’s errand girl, but I am a loyal Duchess noble. I have allegiance to her Majesty of Diamonds, not the Queen. And I can promise you that my Royal is a different sort. I don’t think any of you have ever met my Royal, but these stories of yours Quill, what do they say about her?”

Quill muttered under his breath. “Conflation with the White Queen… There’s too much obscuration to her. It’s like she’s hiding something. She’s never been a part of the others.”

“Perhaps. But remember what I said to you.” The girl tilted her head to the other side. “Given enough nurturing, she could come to agree with this Lord noble’s sentiments.” 

“That’s little more than a pipe dream!” Angie growled. “What are you feeding us, Quill? Philosophy? We need food, not political upheaval. The fact that you’re bringing this up in the first place… Is this what you’ve been doing all this time? Coming up with crazy half-baked plans to get Isabelle back as some kind of final send-off to Evaline?” 

“Angie.” He turned to her, so vulnerable. I suppose I was wrong even then. I wasn’t the only one he took his shield off for. I could feel my teeth grinding. Suddenly, a hand took mine.

Winnie pressed her cheek against my shoulder. I said nothing. 

“You know that I have only ever chosen what I know could happen,” he continued. “You know that I am careful. Every mission I’ve sent Margret on, every girl I’ve brought back, everything I’ve done, I’ve done well.”

“Well, aren’t you full of yourself,” she muttered. 

“I know this sounds insane. And perhaps it is. But I have stages. Let me talk to you about the road to get there. None of this is going to happen overnight. I’m not sure if we should even go through with it. But I want to try.”

“Talk, then,” she sighed. “That’s what you’re best at. Waffling away. Without getting to any point. I swear, if you go to the girls with the same speech you’ve given us, they’ll fall asleep before you even get to the point.”

“Fine.” He drew the scrolls to the side, then pulled out a hastily penned list. Beside it, he spread a map of Wonderland out that looked like it had seen at least a thousand pairs of hands rubbing at its seams. He used pewter cups to keep it from rolling back in upon itself. 

“If we were going to through with this, we would start small. We’re not raising an army here. We’re saving people. We’d have to do this one at a time. Continue to do what Margret and I have been doing, but with humans unrelated to all of us. We’d look for this that were capable of fighting, but children too.” He went through his list with a finger to point to each bullet. It was more for his own benefit than ours. “We have the space, but not the resources. Which is where Sylph will have to come in.” 

The Duchess noble smiled. “Even if my Royal won’t help, I will.” 

“Why?” I asked her.

She blinked. “The world is cruel, and you are asking me why I am trying to right it? Why are you helping Quill?” 

“Because I’ve seen what it’s like on the other side.” 

Sylph bowed her head. “You are not the only one to have seen the petrified forest, Margret.” 

I growled. “It’s more than that and you know it.” 

“I apologize if I haven’t yet murdered enough friends to qualify.” 

Winnie gripped my shoulder as I twitched forward. “What did you say? You have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“Both of you,” Quill interrupted. “Please. We need to work together here.”

I stood back, and held my face high. “I apologize.” 

“I would appreciate if you could keep your attack dog in order, Quill,” Sylph breathed. She floated closer to the Lord noble. My knife hand twitched. 

“She’s not going to be the attack dog,” Quill said. “That’s the next point of my plan. We’re going to need a leader for this operation. And that isn’t going to be me.” 

“Why not?” Angie growled. 

“Because I’m no good at talking. Have you not heard what I’ve said? I can barely make anything out. My voice is too soft. I spend too much time talking to get to the point. And this is with people I trust and care about. Imagine how I would be around strangers. Imagine what I would do with crowds…” He shook his head. “We’re going to need someone that can speak clearly and act as a beacon. And that would be you, Margret.” 

Even knowing what he wanted from the beginning, it still felt like a kick to the stomach. Eyes were on me, and not all of them were positive. I was used to looks like those, yet I still felt as though strips of flesh were being surgically pulled away to reveal the inconsequential, useless creature underneath.

Jessie was the one to speak up. 

“Margret? She’s a noble. They’re not going to follow her.”

“Margret is a noble who’s killed other nobles,” Quill said. My hand twitched harder. “Not only that, but a noble who’s entire philosophy is based on hatred for the Queen. Her distaste for the regime runs deeper than any of us. I’d venture to say that none of you feel quite the same hatred that she does. How many of us killed because the Queen drove us to madness? There’s an intimate nature to it. All of that would prove useful if she needed to act as a rallying leader. Not to mention, she has the charisma and voice for stirring inspiration. I can’t make any of you lift a finger. But imagine how your tune would have change if it was Margret that had given this proposal, and not me.” 

Jessie sat back in the chair and chewed on her lip. “I’m not saying she would be bad, per say. But not having a human in charge would still turn these theoretical human troops against you at the drop of a hat.” 

“I don’t intend Margret to be the only one in charge. She’d be a figurehead. A face with good words. But in reality, we’d need more than that to make decisions going forward. That’s why I extend this to all of you.” 

“I don’t want it,” Mary said after a moment of silence. “I’m not here to fight a war. My baby was just born. And I want him to be able to see the light of day. If we all die down here, then…” She bit her lip.

“I understand,” Quill sighed. “But getting out of here might prove more difficult than you can imagine. And if it happens that we can’t get you out with your child, then you’re doomed down here until the day he dies from malnutrition. We’re getting to the point that I’m not sure saying no to this idea is an option. We’re fugitives. The Queen’s reach knows no bounds. There’s a very real possibility she would hunt all of us to the ends of the earth just to send a message.” 

“She hasn’t reached us yet.” 

“This is the one place she wouldn’t look,” he said. “She can’t risk more people knowing about the existence of these tunnels. The fact that they are here spits in the fact of the narrative her and the other Royals have been trying to concoct. That, and I’m not even sure she remembers this place at all.” 

“If there’s a war, how many of us will die?” Jessie asked. 

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Ideally, none. That’s why my plans included particular types of battle that would minimize casualties and maximize fear help in upsetting the order of things. If we leave them confused and unable to coordinate, we might eventually have the chance to strike at the source. We need to begin slowly, with little to no attacks. It would not be until we’ve amassed a group big enough to strike that we would do anything at all. And when we do, it would be carefully, systematically. We already have the advantage here. These tunnels reach throughout the entire city. What’s to stop us from using them to connect to various epicenters and attack there? We could target guard barracks, well known noble meetups, the Red Light district. We could work in guerilla warfare and rescue missions in at the same time. There’s the potential here for exponential growth, as long as we can continue to supply our numbers with food, water and heat. We have the space. It’s a matter of warmth and sustenance. And this can be accomplished if we can get Sylph’s Royal to agree.” 

“If,” Angie muttered.

“If is a big problem,” he agreed. 

“She will agree. I can promise you that.” Sylph smiled with lines that didn’t reach to her eyes. “She knows you, Quill.” 

Quill’s arms tensed, his mouth turning into a hard line. “I remember. You never quite explained that.” 

“There’s nothing to explain. My Duchess knows things. Perhaps the answer is somewhere in your scrolls. Or perhaps not.” She turned abruptly to me, and I pulled further back. Winnie kept a tight grip on my shoulder, but even she seemed taken aback. “And you, Margret. She’ll know you too, I expect.”

“Why? Is she magic?” I barked a quiet laugh. “I don’t care what you say. I don’t think that any Royal will prove all that trustful in a war effort like this. I agree we’ll need the resources. But you carry yourself in a way I don’t like Sylph. I’ll make that plain. And if she’s anything like you, I’m not sure she’s going to be much help. Flighty, and all that.” 

Sylph just kept that same, strange little smile, bowed her head, and turned back to Quill. “I can take the trip to the Duchess’s palace. I won’t look out of place leaving for the court I came from. If you like, I could take a human with me. I can’t promise their safety, but if I were to bring someone you trust, perhaps you would trust me too. They could verify whatever the Duchess might say” 

“All of their faces are known to the guard,” he sighed. “I’m not sure that’s the best course of action.” 

“I’ll go.” Jessie stood up from her seat abruptly. “I need to get out here. This place might be massive, but these walls are closing in.” 

“You’ll be found,” Angie cautioned. “They know your face.” 

“I’ll be careful. I’ve run before. I know how.” The young girl crossed her arms. “And you’re not my mother. If I choose to leave, then I choose to leave.” 

“It’s not just about you, it’s about the possibility of someone finding you and getting you to say exactly where you’ve been.” Angie chewed on her lip. “I suppose the noble can keep you hidden. But if you’re going to go out there, there’s a chance you might not come back. The journey to the Duchess’s realm passes through Wonderland forest. You know what the stories say.”

“I know.” Jessie glared down the elder woman. “I’m still going.” 

“Alright,” Quill said. “If that’s what you want. Then I can trust that team to go the Duchess. But that means you agree, do you?” 

“I don’t know what to expect from any of this,” Jessie meandered. “I’m just doing what I can to get the hell out of here. But if the Duchess agrees, if we can actually get a Royal on our side… Then we have a case. And I’d be willing to do whatever I could to help.” 

“I would too,” Winnie said quickly. “I mean, I’d do it regardless of if there was a Royal on our side. But I’ve been in from the beginning. Quill is right. And I think his plans are good. And I think the least we can do is try.” 

Mary held her baby closer in her arms. The little infant hadn’t made a noise. He was deathly pale, never having seen the sunlight. And Mary herself didn’t look much better. The two of them were weak, small things. His bones were frail. She still fed him, and he still drank, but her eyes were sad. And they were sadder when she realized she was going to be outvoted. 

Slowly, she let herself sink into the chair. “I want to protect the children out there. There have to be many who don’t have mothers to care for them. If we’re going to do this, Quill, then we can’t just rush off into battle. We have to make it a priority to save people. Those resources of yours should be put to use in more ways than violence. Understand?” 

“I never planned for this to be a mission of brutality. I’m here to rescue, to lead, and to build more than an army. I’d never put children in harm’s way, Mary.” 

“You are now,” she murmured. “Jessie’s just a girl. And what are you, then? How old are you, Quill. Nineteen? Twenty? You’ve grown up too fast.” 

“I’m old enough to know we can’t stand idly by,” he muttered. "I'm twenty one."

“Jessie is old enough to make her own decisions,” Jessie intoned. “I’ve had my bloody cunt broken in enough times to qualify, don’t you think? We all have. We can’t pretend to forget where we’ve come from. We’ve had a lot of quick growing up to do. Don’t you pretend to mother me either. You and Angie are so overbearing sometimes, I swear.” 

Mary held her tongue and went back to staring into the fire. 

“Margret?” Quill asked.

“Huh?” I didn’t realize I was apart of this conversation.

“Are you in agreement?” 

I furrowed my eyebrows. “Quill, I’ve been in agreement ever since you’ve brought it to my attention.” 

He swallowed. “But… Ah… When I first thought of it – perhaps you wouldn’t be, afterwards.” He looked at me intently. 

Ah. 

We’d been drunk. We’d been careless. But still, that hurt. He had to know the truth. It didn’t matter what I felt. It didn’t matter whether or not we’d kissed. This was greater than anything else. This went beyond the both of us. 

I leaned forward, pressed my hands on either side of the table, and looked the man in the eye. “We have to maintain a personal partnership here, Quill. You say that the Royals can be killed. Good. I’m here to kill the Queen, and save whoever I can. Are you letting personal quandaries get in the way of that?” 

“No.” He cleared his throat. “No. I’m not.” 

“Good. Then let’s continue.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a very long chapter. This was not meant to be this long. I am very sorry. At least Hatter's here. Silver linings.
> 
> Muse: 
> 
> Let's Get It - Duck Duck Grey Goose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-M46G6b0Xs
> 
> Antlers - Putting the Dog to Sleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg8Ckamh8Gw

QUILL

As much as I wanted to believe a rebellion could be fanned from the ashes of a dozen human girls, I still couldn’t find it withing me. Staring at the ceiling of my room, those gouged walls, the candle and its temperamental light, this nagging feeling remained. Angie was probably right. 

Of course, everyone had agreed to try. Some were incredulous, but that was to be expected. And a more streamlined explanation from Margret made things infinitely easier. And yet, no matter how soothing and charismatic that Queen noble might be, I couldn’t find myself nodding along to my own plans. 

There were yellow eyed shadows peering over my shoulder to remind me of what a façade I’d become. This was ridiculous. What was I, did I really think I was some kind of leader? No. Margret was a capable general. Angie was stronger willed than I could ever be. 

So, I’m not even taking charge of my own rebellion? I hide myself from the blame and refuse to take the work? Am I a coward? 

I’m just a Lord noble. 

I’ll do the work. I’ll do whatever is required. My life, if need be, can be forfeit. It should have been forfeit ages ago, anyways. Evaline gave me a future I shouldn’t have kept. It was because I was a coward that I ran away with… With that girl. It was because I was a coward that I never once fought my father. But it was because I fought back against that cowardice, that these girls were safe. 

And yet, who did I think I was to say this was bravery? A dozen human girls, a half-mad Queen noble, and myself, standing against the Queen? Nothing more than the promise of other troops, of the resources we’d need to support them? That wasn’t fighting cowardice or a broken system. That was stupidity. I was setting everyone up to be slaughtered. I was a weakling in mind and body. Spindly arms, barely walking upright after limping for nearly a year. A forgettable face. Broken spirit.

I laughed in my hands. 

I couldn’t even stand up to my own father even now. Even as he was gone from my life. I could never forget him. 

Those yellow eyes only drew closer. And closer. They reminded me, firmly, of my recent slip up, the memories that had brought me to completion. Reminded me of the way I’d felt when that Queen noble had kissed me, and what was left to be desired from something so innocent. Reminded me of what I thought about when no one was around, the images of chains and blood and welts and hatred my body starved for. Reminded me that no matter what I did to help those people, I would never stop being what I was. And what was I? 

The dirt never seemed to wash away. Not even Margret could change that. 

She probably would have been gentle. Gentler than the other girls. She seemed like a sweet girl. Wide-eyed. Moony. She might have taken care of me, if I had just let her done what she wanted. She was full of the kind of puppy love I now remembered as a nostalgic bittersweet memory. 

It was better this way, though. We needed hands. We couldn’t afford to sit and think about our feelings. 

I looked at the door to my room and felt a chill down my spine. The yellow eyes followed my gaze and the smile beneath them widened. 

I had to pretend. It was all I could do. 

And so I got up, and got to work. 

Jessie would be leaving with Sylph in the next few days. They needed a carriage strong enough to carry them through the Wonderland forest safely. Slavers, the Jabberwocky and stranger monsters were only a few of the problems they needed to account for along the way. But then the issue of security was compounded by discretion. 

Names and faces had weight in Wonderland. The Royals and their mandated five year censuses could put a hitch in plans, but they were meaningless unless there was a name to attach to that face in the crowd. Sylph was just a Duchess noble without courtly position, but the kinds of questions she was asking were ones that could easily draw heads if the wrong person heard them. One wrong move, and her imprisonment would reveal us all. Every hour she spent negotiating prices and travel time was an hour I spent idly worrying.

And idle this time was. There too many hours in the day for me to spend nervous over consequences I had no control over. 

I threw myself into direction, scheduling Margret and myself in gathering what supplies we could for the girls, Angie working alongside me to take stock in what we needed. We stockpiled for the rooms we would soon, hopefully, be making use of. But we couldn’t take anyone else in yet, as much as I wanted to. What we had was meagre and there was little opportunity to raise that margin. And no matter how the girls begged, I couldn’t bring myself to let them up there. Maybe names and faces had weight in this world, but not having any at all was arguably worse. A free human was simply an unclaimed human. We couldn’t afford those consequences. No matter how often Jessie argued. 

The scribes gave use their stipend as per usual every week. I suppose I should have been thankful for the sacks of flour and oil. They were doing what they felt was their best. Without showing their face. Or offering any wisdom. Now that I knew the truth of them, I couldn’t help but see this as a quiet spit in our faces. This was all that they could manage? They wouldn’t even deign to offer me conversation? Not wanting to participate in politics after knowing all that they did? They were cowards. 

I had to laugh at that. A Lord noble, calling Queen nobles cowards. Never thought I’d see the day. 

It didn’t matter. I did what I could. The girls were like cats, and I was no shepherd. They knew we all had to work together, and they did their best. It was enough to know they were trying. If I didn’t believe fully in the cause I was telling them to follow, I couldn’t expect them to be the same. We were just people working together, I was less ordering and more suggesting. 

Some of them sluggishly cleaned out rooms for possible habitation, others went exploring down dark tunnels looking for routes that had long since been washed out or torn apart by cave-ins. Some were dead set on fighting as soon as they’d heard, and Angie had to explain to them not to go near the surface until further plans could be more thoroughly thought out. Others wanted to stay down in the tunnels until the proposed end that might never come. 

Those ones stayed close to Mary and the baby I was growing more worried about by the day. Still others, just a couple, quietly whispered among themselves about the possibility of running away. They spoke by the fire as they braided each other’s hair. Millie looked my way and I could see the guilt, but Nora brazenly pulled her closer. I couldn’t blame them. I might have done the same. 

But the next day I was pleasantly surprised to see that Winnie had taken them under her wing. There was determination in her as she spoke with them on the practices of first aid. They were practicing stitching on an orange. They listened to her instructions with as much care as they could. I wasn’t sure what she’d said to them, but it worked. 

And then Margret returned with armfuls of food. Winnie dropped the needle and jumped to her feet. The Queen noble hadn’t realized she was being attacked until the girl was already on her. Bags of meat and bread went flying as Winnie pulled the Queen noble over to join them. I felt a quiet drop in my heart, then quickly turned back to calculating our inventory. I had work to do. I couldn’t afford to entertain fantastical notions.

On the surface of Wonderland, there was the usual chaos. Some kind of festival was underway, one that I didn’t particularly care for. It involved even brighter colors than before, and the squirming of naked bodies left and right. One couldn’t move for the fornication taking place on the streets in the middle of a stark afternoon. But this meant that the proprietors were careless, and carelessness meant prime opportunities for pilfering. 

I had to be more careful than Margret, lacking a cloak like hers. Whatever magic had been instilled in that fabric had left it durable and anonymous, and my old tattered brown thing was little more than rags. I got more stares for it than I felt comfortable with. I needed different clothes. That was easily remedied, a quiet tug and a stall manager was short a pair of boots and a blouse. But that left less hands to grab the charcoal we’d need to light up the newest set of tunnels. A bag came in handy, and I spotted one a stall over, but this time a young King noble girl caught wind of me. 

Her eyes widened at the careful movement of my hand from my side up to the stall and back again, the sack in hand. She didn’t speak, but the child did point out the strange tattered man that was rapidly disappearing into the crowd. Then she looked up to her gruff father with confused and worried eyes. The man thankfully brushed the girl off, muttering something as he continued to pick through the necklaces he was getting for his wife. What a day to be shopping with family. 

Moving through the crowd, I quickly broke eye contact with the girl. Fifty feet out and a bend in the road, I could let out a breath and sink against the brick wall of a lopsided building. The bodies continued to writhe and dance in the streets. My shoes were splashed with a bottle of wine as two inebriated male Queen nobles trotted by. One had an unlit cigar in his mouth. The other reeked of hookah. Neither of them paid me any mind. 

I should come up during festivities more often. This was far too easy. 

“Please!” 

A screeching, broken cry came from a deep gouge between two buildings. I could see the break a foot away. The alley was dotted with broken glass and the old carcass of a cat. 

The other voice was a purr. “Don’t be like that, sweet, you know you aren’t getting out of this. Calm down, and this will be enjoyable for both of us.” 

“I’ll just – I’ll do anything! Please, you can’t!”

“If you just stopped squirming, I know you’d stop screaming too, you know. Come on, love, are you really so cautious?” 

“Let go of me!” 

“Ah ah ah, no hitting. Hey – what did I just say? Arse down. Now. I want to see those lips spread by your own hand. If you don’t listen, then we’ll do this on the public road. Would you like that? I know I would.” 

We didn’t have the room. I kept repeating that in my head even as I felt my grip on the bag starting to slip. We couldn’t take another. I’d already told them all that myself. Some were still looking for relatives. It wasn’t fair. And if I showed my face, there was a very real chance it could be brought back to my father. Sometimes all they needed was a description. Words had weight. And if my father knew, then we were all doomed. I couldn’t risk it. I had more people counting on me. We only had two pairs of hands. We couldn’t afford to lose one. 

Don’t be a hero, I kept saying in a mantra in my head. Live to fight another day. Imagine all of those humans in the crowd before, why don’t you? You can’t save any of them, why is this one any different? All around me, countless woman squealed and cried as nobles did what they do best, and yet it this one, this stupid one that stopped me in my tracks. I needed to move on. 

Sobs. The crack of a whip. Screams. 

I gritted my teeth, dropped the cloth bag, and sprinted into the alleyway. 

The girl was raven haired. For a second, I saw Evaline. But when she turned about, heavy rope keeping her hands tightly bound, those eyes were a dark ruddy brown and full of tears, and I was disillusioned. Her face was young, too young. Her body was thrust unceremoniously up against the red brick wall, her ragged dress swept aside to reveal the red welts of her behind and an entrance that looked thankfully untouched. I tried to avert my eyes. Absolutely not Evaline. What was I thinking?

A crooked top hat turned to look at me with a pointed grin. The redheaded Queen noble couldn’t have been more than fifteen. In one hand was the end of the rope he’d tied her with. He tightened his grip on it. That made her whimper. In the other hand was the reason she’d screamed. That cat-o-nine-tails was a brutal thing, black and leather and knotted at each end. 

“Here to watch?” He drawled. “I do like an audience.” 

“Let the girl go,” I muttered. 

“What was that?” His grin widened. “I can’t really hear you. Why are you mumbling? Are you lost?” 

I swallowed. “I said, let the girl go.” 

“I bought her.” The boy frowned. “I’d appreciate if my toys weren’t taken away from me.” 

“She’s not a toy. She’s a person.” 

The boy narrowed his eyes. And it was then that I noticed them. Yellow. 

There was a chill in the summer air. 

The boy dropped the rope. “Stay there for me, sweet.” He slapped her on the arse, then stepped forward with the whip in his hand. “Alright, my friend, let’s get the both of us on the same page here, shall we? I’m not here to be your enemy.” He grinned, revealing a set of teeth with pointed incisors. “Perhaps we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. But this lovely doll is an entertainment girl. I purchased her legally. At a hearty discount I might add. As you can see, she’s iffy when it comes to pleasure. Could be a virgin, could be she’s not broken in yet...” He shrugged. “Either way, I’ve been told I’m good at training people, you know. I’ll have her begging for more in no time. So, move along, won’t you?” 

“I don’t care,” I muttered. I went to the girl. Her wrists were rubbed raw. I gently helped her up by her arms, and with a nervous hiccup, she awkwardly pulled down the rags of her dress to allow her what was left of her dignity. Her hands clenched as she looked up to me. The nervousness was something I’d grown used to. I couldn’t expect her to trust me. 

A hand snatched at my shoulder and whirled me around. I couldn’t look the boy in the eye, so I gazed angrily at his ridiculous hat. That was the only thing about him that was eye level with me anyways. It wasn’t often that I was taller than people, but this was an exception. 

“Listen mate, I’m not sure what the bloody hell you think you’re doing here, but this isn’t your place,” he chuckled. “You can’t just take another man’s property, even if there’s a festival. At least ask first, you know?”

I pulled his hand off me. “I’m taking the girl, and I’m leaving. Do you understand me?” 

“I understand you have a screw loose.” The boy’s face twisted into a scowl. I was very aware of the way he idly snapped the whip back and forth behind him. “Don’t you know who I am?” 

He was truly starting to get on my nerves. “A little prick.” 

The boy paused as if in thought. His face twisted into an exaggerated frown as he examined what I said. Then, abruptly, he broke out into a laugh that echoed all the way out to the main road. The redhead slapped my shoulder with an aggressive cackle, then patted it for good measure. I wonder if he was doing it on purpose. He seemed to like it when I flinched. 

“I haven’t heard that one before. You’re funny, Lord noble. I’m surprised. You see, I’m kind of famous around here. No harm done, though. The names’ Asentual. Most call me Hatter these days. Bit of a shame. I picked out my name myself.” 

I glanced back at the girl. She was slowly backing up into a corner and waiting to see how this would turn out. No shoes. That was a shame. Well, at least I had something in the bag. They’d be a little big for her, but it was better than broken glass in between her toes. 

“Oi!” The boy grabbed my chin and pulled me back to face him, forcing me to look in his eyes. I worked hard to keep my breathing even. “Are you listening?” 

“Not really. I have places to be.” 

“Well, I can’t expect anything less from a Lord noble, I suppose. Listen to me.” He tightened his grip on my jaw. “I’m Asentual. The bonified Mad Hatter. The Queen’s darling. Right Hand to be. I know you’re ignorant on the subject, so I’m going to cut you some slack here.” He looked me over. “Pale, gaunt as you are, you’re the very epitome of a man living under a rock, aren’t you? So let me make this easier for you. I don’t hate you in any way, friend. In fact, I think we could be close. All we have to do is have some fun together, right? You and I, we can double team this girl there, make her possible first time really special, then take her out on the town during this festival, have a little pub crawl.” He finally let go of my face and patted my shoulder with a grin. “That’ll smooth things over won’t it? What’s your name, by the way?” 

I grabbed the boy by the neck and shoved him against the wall. He fell against it with a grunt of surprise, then snapped up his whip arm a moment later. The leather hit up against my side, but the cloak offered enough protection to make it feel like a slap. I flinched, he kicked out at my groin, but I angled myself in time to only get a firm hit to my thigh. Swearing under my breath, I pinned the unruly leg with a foot while tightening my grip on his gulping throat. He gasped for air, but he seemed to get the message. His arms and legs fell still, instead just watching me with his big stupid hat askew, his rat’s nest of hair hiding his eyes just enough to make this all palatable. I had to hide that my body was shaking. My legs were already starting to feel weak from the sudden move. My back ached. I was going too fast. Any harder, and I’d be risking collapsing in this disgusting alley. 

“I’m not your friend,” I hissed. “I’m not your mate. I’m not here to play games, and I’m not here to entertain childish notions. I’m taking the girl, and I’m leaving.” 

The boy’s mouth twitched into a faint snarl, only to change to a seductive smirk. “I’ve never been pinned up against a wall before.” 

Shivering in revulsion, I leapt back from the pompous child. He must have expected it, because he followed me, getting a new grip on that whip and subsequently sending it flying across my face. I held up my hand to block and got those leather straps clinging to my wrist with stinging accuracy. He wrenched my hand back with a quick flick of his own, jumped forward, and knocked me down to the ground with a swift kick to the stomach. I tried to rise with a muffled grunt, but he had a knee dug firmly into my abdomen. Those yellow eyes were right in my face as he looked for a way to pin me more thoroughly. 

I hated those damned eyes. Looking down on me. Daring me. Questioning if I found this titillating. It was because it was a boy, wasn’t it? A little old for your taste, huh? You were younger when it was you. Well, it doesn’t matter. He probably screams like you did. Moans like you did. Like, father, like son. You were disgusting, Quill. Utterly disgusting. 

I could feel something slimy under my skin. 

I pulled one hand loose from under my fallen body and poked those two damned harbingers of history out. 

He grunted in pain as he reflexively went to protect his eyes. I turned his pin on its head, knocking that stupid hat off his mop of hair in the process and sending it flying into a puddle. My chest had the air knocked out of it from the fall. Every action was pitiful. But he was blind, and I was fast enough. I grabbed both of his thin wrists and shoved them against the cobbled tiles. His legs pitched up and I slammed back against his thigh with a well placed kick. He sucked in a breath of pain, then went still. I was shaking faintly, the exhaustion growing and my back screaming in pain, but I could just barely maintain the hold as I gasped for breath. I glared down at the boy. His chest was heaving. His arms resisted once, but there was no give from me. Sighing, he fell back against the dirty stone, looked me in the eye, and grinned. 

“This is some interesting foreplay of yours.” 

“You’re disgusting,” I gasped. I wanted to strangle him. I wasn’t the disgusting one. I wasn’t. 

“And you fight like an old man. What’s wrong with you? You can’t be that decrepit.” He raised an eyebrow. “Or are you just a shut in? Is that what this is? You do look the part.” 

“Shut up!” God, I hated him. Everything about him. His damnable eyes. I wanted to cut them out. Destroy them. 

Something ebbed at the edge of my mind. 

“Touchy, touchy, friend. I’m just making conversation. You seem so tense.” He gulped another breath of air, then started to wriggle again. He wasn’t actively looking for a way out, but I didn’t like the way he moved his hips. Bile threatened in the back of my throat.

“Making me uncomfortable isn’t going to work.” 

“Oh?” His eyes gleamed. “It did before.” 

“I’m not here to play games,” I growled. “I’m here for the girl. And you’re not getting in the way.” 

“You seemed like it, when you arrived in such a ridiculous way. What have we been doing this whole time, if not playing some silly drunken game?” He leaned forward, yellow eyes glinting and making my stomach churn. “Well, you don’t smell like alcohol. Kind of sweet, actually. Maybe you’re just mad. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve met someone mad.”

“Would you just shut up?”

“Well, I would, but I should also warn you about something.” 

I tightened my grip on his wrists. “What?”

“Hey, I’m not trying to be the villain here. I just wanted to let you know that you’ve ruined it for the both of us.”

“What are you talking about? Ruined what?” 

“That girl I paid for with my own good money has given us the slip.” 

I paused, then turned to see the empty corner of the alley. I looked to the other side and caught the back of the girls’ head as she ran with all her might down the street.

“Bloody hell,” I muttered. 

“Exactly.” He shrugged with what motion I gave him. “Off to be someone else’s toy. Oh well. You don’t look well. Had enough exercise lately?” 

“Shut up.” 

“You don’t have enough hands to shut me up,” he commented with another infuriating smirk. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you, huh? This isn’t exactly normal behaviour. Did a girl do something to you? What led you down this road of madness? I’m curious.”

“No. Stop talking.” 

“Oh so it IS a girl, is it? I knew it. I’m good at guessing things. My mates say I’m lucky. Got an intuition, you know. Maybe I can help you out.” 

“I don’t need any help.” 

“Don’t need any help?” He lifted his hands up and I desperately tried to push them back down. He grinned. It was nothing for him to sit up, push me off of him, and begin to dust himself off. He’d punted me away like I was nothing more than a leaf on the wind. Meanwhile, my whole body was strained. My back was withered, my fingers were filled with gravel and bits of glass, and mud was caked to my knees in thick murky sheets. Somehow, he’s managed to avoid all of it. The pristine redhead jumped up with a stretch of his arms, then leisurely went to go grab his forlorn hat. I hobbled to my feet behind him and prepared in case of another fight. But one of my legs was shaking with effort, and the other couldn’t hold any weight. 

“You could have dropped this thing somewhere drier,” he sighed as he looked his hat over. “This is a family heirloom, you know.” 

I needed to find my bag and get out of here. He’d already seen my face. It he was telling even the faintest of truths within that bravado, then I needed to leave, and soon. Tugging my now muddy cloak tightly around my neck, I rushed for the cloth sack I’d left just outside of the alley. I turned the corner, looked to my left, then to my right. Nothing but the dead cat. 

The girl had taken it. 

“Well, looks like you’re having all sorts of bad luck, aren’t you?” The boy clapped a hand around my shoulder again as he followed me out. I forced it off quicker this time. 

“Don’t touch me.”

“A little touch never hurt anyone. You don’t seem to be in very good sorts. Covered in mud, looking like you just had a brawl. Fancy coming for a drink? Might help your nerves.”

I backed away from him and nearly knocked into a group of Duchess noble women in the process. Dipping my head them in apology, I kept a wary eye on the Queen noble boy that followed close at my heels. 

I turned to run. There was nowhere to run to. I hadn’t even realized it, but he’d backed me into a corner between a street vendor and a sheer brick wall. 

“We were just fighting. I don’t know what your manner is here, but I have things to do,” I muttered. “I have to go.” 

“Well, we were fighting over a girl, I suppose, but that’s neither here nor there. Water under the bridge my friend. It looked more like madness anyways. I’m more curious about you. That’s all.”

I looked quickly from side to side to see if there was any escape. Too many bodies, and too many carts. He had me cornered. This was all my fault. I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid. “I need to go.”

He grabbed me by the arm. I hobbled over unsteady legs and barely retained my balance trying to edge away from him. I opened my mouth to yell, only for him to put a finger to his lips, smirking. “I don’t know who you are, or what business you had in interrupting me, but if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s a snake. I won’t say a word.”

A shiver went up my spine. “First of all, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Secondly, if you think I would trust you, you’re truly delusional.” 

“Christ, Lord noble, you’re like a caged dog let out for the first time. Let’s just have a drink, you and I. It’s a festival today.”

“Let me go, and I won’t fight you.” 

He grinned. “Strong words for a wounded animal. Alright, I get it. People don’t often trust me. But they do often enjoy my company. What do you have to lose with a single drink?”

“More than you know.” 

“Alright, let’s put this another way.” He looked me over. His eyes glittered. “When’s the last time you had a chance to truly relax? To stop thinking about the past, and look to the future?”

I faltered. “What?” 

“When’s the last time you stopped feeling haunted?”

He looked at me like he was a cat with the cream. 

“You should see the look on your face. I told you,” he grinned. “I’m good at these things. Come on, you and I. Let’s have a drink. Just one. You’re not fond of the sex and fun, that’s fine. I know a quieter place.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Why not?”

I scoffed. “You’re a child, a rapist, predator, clearly of renown, I – I should go. I shouldn’t even be dignifying you with a response.” 

“And yet you’re still talking to me. You were scared a moment ago. Scared of what, a child?” His smirk widened. “A rapist is a strong word, and being of renown just means cheap drinks, don’t you know? Ah, there’s no point to arguments like these. Come on, actions speak louder than words. We’re not going anywhere with me trying to convince you.” With that, he hoisted me forward with in a firm tug. I went barreling against him, and he righted me to lean on his shoulder. 

“Let me go,” I hissed.

“If I do, you’ll go falling over in the road.” He hooked his arm in mine. His pointed teeth were drawn back in a wide grin. “Can’t have that, can we?” 

“I have a knife, I could use it-“ 

“What, this thing?” He dangled the crude steak knife in front of me. I looked to the empty sheath on my belt, then tried to snatch it away from him. No avail, I nearly sent myself sprawling onto the cobblestones. It was only his strong grip that kept me stable. Cursing under my breath, I resigned myself to eyeing him. “I saw it on your belt. Strange that you didn’t try to use it, if you felt so righteous in saving that girl. Wasn’t it worth killing someone over?” 

“If I killed someone, it would be broadcast all over the bloody Capital.” 

He nodded thoughtfully as he twisted the knife in his hand. “To be sure. Killing me would have been a hell of a misstep on your part. Though, it’s strange. I don’t think I’ve ever met a noble that didn’t balk at murder before. You just said it with a straight face, you know. Imagine what the Queen would think. She loves me.” 

I turned away in disgust. “I don’t care what kind of game you’re trying to play here. I’m no one. I apologize if I ruined your day, but I have places to be. So if you would be so kind as to let me go, I’ll be on my way and out of your hair.” 

The hatter shrugged. “Hm… No. I think I rather enjoy my new and interesting friend and the prospect of us sharing a drink together. I don’t want anything of you, but this. So suffer through it for me, will you? Think of it as an apology. For ‘ruining my day’ as it were. Let’s be merry. What is it today, birth of Alice? Christmas? I don’t keep with dates much.”

“I don’t care.” 

“You don’t seem like the type not to care. I bet you have a mind for this sort of thing. You’d ace your exams in tutoring, wouldn’t you?” 

He turned us from street to street. Every foot was a foot further away from the entrance to the barrow that I was comfortable with. The discomfort of unfamiliar territory kept me on guard. Vaguely, I could pick out landmarks that signaled what district we were in at any given moment, but that was hazy when the only experience I had came from old maps. The Queen noble though, he navigated the streets like he had been born here. He passed by the edge of the Red Light district, then found us a road right into the distilleries. The scent of beer went from fluttering on the wind, to an overwhelming punch in the gut in minutes. I felt nauseous by the time he stopped at the steps of a pub that seemed no different from the others. 

“I met this King noble the other day that claimed this fine establishment had the best drinks in town, and the quietest company. Weeping Rabbit, I think they call it.” He looked up at the sign. “Difficult to tell, isn’t it? Nothing much there. That picture, do you think that’s a rabbit, or a hare? Or perhaps a squirrel.” 

“Why do you feel the need to torture me?” 

“Badger, maybe?” 

“I hate you.” 

His grip tightened. “It’s not nice to speak so lowly of your betters, Lord noble. Come on, friend, let’s get ourselves a drink. I’m parched after carrying this conversation.” 

At least the place was empty. Only a few Lord nobles meandered in a corner. My heart pounded as I looked for resemblance, but all of them were more human than noble. The faint yellow streaks in greasy black hair were the only things that kept them from the arbitrary label of lesser. My father would not have wanted anything to do with them. 

Still, every glance their way was another flinch I had to keep under control.

“What do you drink?” Hatter asked from across the table he’d forced me to sit at. I looked to his hand under the table. It was firmly on the handle of his whip. His feet were positioned right over mine. Any effort to stand would be met with a quick kick to the shin. 

“Anything,” I muttered. “I don’t care.” 

“Well that’s no fun.” He called over the human tavern maid with a whistle and click of his fingers. “Get us a couple mugs of mead, will you? I think I’ll enjoy the common life today.” 

The girl ducked her head with a meek smile as she began to walk away, but she froze when Hatter grabbed the inside of her thigh. He eyed it with those terrible eyes as he gently squeezed.

“And hang back afterward,” he purred. “I think I’d like something to decorate my lap.” 

I wonder if he truly saw the look of fear on her face as she went running off to get the drinks. 

“You’re disgusting,” I said. 

“What,” he laughed. “For enjoying the entertainment at an establishment?” 

“She’s a girl, not a toy.” 

“She’s a slave, Lord noble. This is what they’re there for. I’m a bit confused how someone like you can go so long with such an alien philosophy and not simply expire.” 

“Do you not understand the concept of people having feelings?” I asked him. “She’s a person, and so are you.” 

“She’s a human, my friend.” He leaned forward. “There’s a difference.” 

I matched him. “What, the color of their hair? Their eyes?” 

“Their heritage. Their weakness. They lack the bloodline that marks every great Wonderlander.” 

I smiled wryly. “Do you know what species Alice was?” 

His smiled disappeared. “Now I know you’re mad, because you’re talking about children’s stories.” 

“Stories like that are only a degree away from the truth.” I leaned back with my arms crossed. “And if you truly believe that you’re not harming people with the things you do, then you’re the mad one. Or is it, that you know the truth, and you simply refuse to look it in the eye? I believe that’s how people survive in this world, isn’t it?” 

“It’s cute that you bring that up, because you haven’t been able to look me in the eye this whole time. I wonder if it’s you that seems oblivious to reality and refuses to admit it.” 

I watched the girl pouring our drinks. She was being accosted by one of those Lord nobles, some young man with a few thin streaks of platinum in among black braids. At least she knew how to handle herself. Still, the urge to punch that man in the face that saw fit to grab her breast was difficult to overcome. 

“You’re still doing it,” the hatter chuckled. “You think ignoring me will make the questions go away?” 

“Is that what you tell yourself every morning when you wake up and feel that urge to scream?” I asked him with my eye still on the girl.

“Pardon?” 

My mouth twitched. “Don’t pretend.” 

“No, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Every Wonderlander has it. That inherent understanding that something is wrong. What vice is it you’re burying it in? Sex, is that it? How close are you to your own madness?”

“We’re just going to keep calling each other mad until one of us actually gets there, aren’t we?” 

“Perhaps.” I sighed. “I suppose there’s no point to having conversations like these. You’re never going to get what I’m saying. You don’t understand what the world is like.” 

The hatter shrugged. “You seem to think so little of me, when you know nothing about me. It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.” 

I grimaced. “You can pretend to have an open mind, hatter. It won’t change what you are.” 

“What am I?” 

“Blind.” 

“Am I now? Ah, our drinks.” Hatter took the pint from the quiet server, placing the other one in front of me. Thoughtfully, he rolled the dark liquid around in his glass, then looked to the girl. She was shivering, ever so slightly.

“Do you still want me, sir?” She quietly asked him. 

He bit his lip, considering something. He drummed his fingers against the table. 

“No,” he finally said. “I don’t think so. I’m actually entertaining a friend here. It would be rude of me to have my attention diverted.” He turned to me. “What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t,” I said. 

“Pity.” He looked a little longer at his glass. “And what’s your name, sweetness?” 

She blinked. “Sorry, sir?” 

“Your name, love.” 

She seemed to forget how to speak. I think I did too. I looked hard at the hatter’s mouth, his nose, anything but the eyes, and couldn’t seem to find a motive. “It’s Lavender, sir,” she muttered. “My master named me Lavender.” 

“Your master named you?” 

“What was your name before?” I asked her. 

Her eyes widened. “I don’t think that’s proper.” 

“Humor him,” the hatter deadpanned. 

“I… Sophie. It was Sophie.”

“I see why your master named you Lavender,” the hatter chuckled. I shot the boy a look, but he didn’t seem to care. Instead, he took a drink and made a face, then went in for another gulp.

“Thank you, Sophie.” I bowed my head. 

“Not- not a problem,” she stuttered. “Thank you for your patronage – ah- if you have, any, er, any issue at all, let me know.” She curtsied, then ran off before the boy could change his mind.

Hatter sipped at his mead while I watched him. 

“What?” he asked. 

“What was that?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Why did you change your mind? Why did you ask for her name?” 

“Is that not what you wanted?” He raised an eyebrow. “You told me not to be blind. So I tried for you.”

“You’re treating this like it’s some kind of joke, but it’s not.” 

“I’m not joking here either, old man.” Asentual laughed. “You wanted me to treat her like a person. So I didn’t touch the pretty bird, and I asked for her name. Is that not what you wanted?” 

“What I want doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t be about humoring me. It should be about what you actually see. And as far as I’m concerned, you’re still blind.” 

“What does it take to see?” He asked. 

“More than you can imagine.”

He groaned as he lay back in his chair. He crossed his arms behind his head. “You know, it’s people like you that make the slaving profession so difficult to manage. There’s always one little bleeding heart among the group that spoil the bunch. Usually it’s some King noble girl and someone’s there to shut them up, but still. Annoying on auction day when not even fucking them gets them to stay quiet.” 

I patted the table and stood up. “Alright, I didn’t come out here to discuss politics with you, or try to change your mind. You’re obviously of high renown, so I’m not going to bother you with my low value as a noble. It would be better if I just left.” 

He prodded my leg with his shoe. 

“Stay,” he ordered. 

Slowly, I sat back down in my seat, a subtle shiver running up my spine. 

“And have a drink.” He raised his glass. “I never got a chance to say my piece.”

“What’s the piece you want to say?” 

“Guessing your fortune.” He grinned.

“Some kind of psychic, are you?” 

“No, I’m just very good at guessing.” He leaned back as he took a good look at me. 

I grabbed the tankard and tried to gulp down what I could. Perhaps if it was finished, he’d leave me be. It was just one drink, after all. 

I watched with great chagrin as he waved Sophie back over to bring me another round. My nose wrinkled as more of the overly sweet deep red drink flowed into my glass. I’d barely tasted it, but that cloying aftertaste wasn’t helping my stomach. “On my tab, drink yourself into a stupor for all I care,” Asentual chuckled. “Alright.” He rubbed his hands together. “I know you’re in the past. That much is clear.” 

“What makes you say that?” I muttered as I looked down into the glass. 

“You’ve never met me before in your life, and you can’t look me in the face.” He held up a hand when I opened my mouth. “I’m working here. I know I’m handsome, so it’s not that you see something inherently wrong with it. It’s my eyes, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“How do I know? It’s not hard. You’re a Lord noble, and you have little to no knowledge of the Capital. Didn’t even know where we were going the whole time, I had to lead you along. Which means that you’re either from your court or a noble settlement – and that hair color screams courtly – and something happened there. You don’t like the look of your own royals’ eyes.” 

I gripped the handle of tankard tightly in order to keep it from spilling. I had to place it down on the table to get my bearings. Slowly, I breathed in and out. It kept my voice even.

“I don’t think you’re right about that.”

“You’re running away from something.” He continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “Something terrible. Who knows what it is, but…” His eyebrows furrowed, and his smile slowly disappeared. “Ah. I get it now. An uncle? Friend of the family?”

“Stop.”

“That’s your problem, my friend. Right there.” He finished the last of his drink and called for another refill. “You look like you’re about to jump out of your seat just because I’ve struck a nerve. It shouldn’t matter what it is. Tell me, Lord noble, where are you now?” 

I stared at him.

“The Capital, mate, the Capital. It’s called Capital for a reason. This is the only place that matters. Your backwater court and everyone within it are now irrelevant. You ran away, moved, left, whatever, you ended up here, and yet your mind is still back there. You can’t leave. You won’t let yourself leave. Because you’re too afraid. And it’s dragging you down. That’s what has you frowning all the time, I’d bet.” 

Slowly, I brought my drink up to my face, and took a look gulp. That cloying taste had faded into the background. Perhaps I shouldn’t have downed my first drink so quickly. 

“There you go.” He nodded in approval. “Drink up. People like you need it more than others. It’s a good salve to the wound.”

“I don’t believe it is.” I set down the empty glass. This time I didn’t bother to argue when he got Sophie to fill it again. “I believe this is yet another vice that will cause inevitable damage, as one continues to ignore the problem.”

“What, would you rather face the problem head on?” 

“I don’t need drinks to get me out of whatever you think I have. Everything you telling me seems to be terrible advice, I’ll be honest. You’re a little young to pretend you know how the world works.” 

“I know more than a troll under a bridge, don’t I? When’s the last time you got drunk?” 

“A week ago.”

“Really? I would have thought much earlier. How was it?” 

“I told someone too much.” 

He nodded to himself. “Sounds about right. But how did this someone react?” 

“She-” 

“She?” I swore the boy’s ears pricked up like a dog.

“A friend.” His mouth widened into a pointed grin. 

“The way you say that makes it so obvious she isn’t.”

“We’re getting passed the point. Do you actually care, or can I shut up and leave?” 

“Sorry, sorry, I just didn’t realize you were getting laid, you struck me as far too uptight since your uncle.” 

I winced. 

“Sorry.” He waved a hand. “Continue.”

“She reacted as a friend would. That’s all.” 

“So she didn’t insult you, or act like it was your fault in any way, or that this was something you should still care about?” 

“She was empathetic.” 

“And why can’t you be empathetic to yourself?” 

I watched the mead swim in my tankard. “I don’t have time to sit back and calculate the feelings I have. I have work to do. I’m not some child picking and choosing what he wants to do on any given day.” 

“I’m hurt. But that’s not what I meant. If you sit back and examine your feelings, you’re only going to end up even further focused on the past. I know people like you. Their fear and guilt ends up enveloping them. People like that end up on the wrong side of the Red Light district with snuff shoved up their nose, because they never got over their past. If you’re getting off on it, that’s the real heavy hitter, too. Because you’ve got to retrain yourself, right? Find something new to obsess over.”

“Do you ever hear yourself sometimes?”

“Not usually.” He held his glass up to me before drinking it down. 

“I feel like we’re talking in circles around the same things and yet refusing to see eye to eye.” 

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “I just came here for a nice drink, and to show you how wrong you are.”

“Arrogance does not become you.” 

“Are you sure?” He grinned. “I’d say I’m pretty good at it. I’d had all sorts of women that eat it up. They can’t seem to tell the difference between a young rapscallion and a predator on a mission. And I prefer it that way.” 

“You’re too young to be thinking of things like that. How old are these women?” 

“Don’t rain on my fun, old man. Let’s talk more about you.” 

“I’d rather we not.” 

“Then just this one piece of advice.” He finished his tankard, then left it at the edge of the table for Sophie to fill up. The boy leaned forward and motioned for me to do the same. Cautiously, I leaned towards him, only for him to grab me by the scruff of my shirt until we were inches away.

I couldn’t look away from those yellow eyes. 

“Listen, friend,” he muttered. “Every moment that they continue to affect you, is another moment they win. The only way you can ever win the game, is to forget them. Don’t give them the dignity of being in your thoughts. Prove to them that you are better than they ever imagined you could be, then spit in their faces by forgetting their name. And for God’s sake, smile once in a while. Do something fun. Anything. For your own sanity. Understand me?” 

“Why are you telling me this?” I breathed. 

“A few reasons,” he leaned back. “One, you made me realize maybe I should expand my horizons.” He looked me up and down, and bit his lip to hide a smirk. “Two, well,” he shrugged as he looked to the whip handle in his hand. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone put what you said into words before. Not as eloquently as that, anyways. That feeling that people can’t get rid of.” 

I stared at him. 

“And three,” he flicked his eyes back to me. “You remind me of someone. She was always barrelling in where she didn’t belong, either. She’d never shut up about it. The court got sick of it.” 

“About what, exactly?” 

“Humanity. The madness of the world. The terrible reality we live in. The screaming you deal with early in the morning and late at night. I got sick of it, too.” He looked at the recently refilled tankard, pulled it back to him, and looked within. “But when you say things like that, you’re destined not to live long.” He looked up to me. “So, don’t be like her, mate. Develop a backbone. Learn to live like a normal person. Be like the rest of us, and you’ll fit in fine. Or go mad, and die.” 

I shook my head. The mead was turning my stomach, so I pushed it away. “I don’t think you’re right. I think there’s a way to help. I think to bury our heads in the sand is to be one of the reasons the world is still shite.” 

“So, what do you do, then?” He chuckled to himself. “Treason?” 

I stared hard at my tankard. “You don’t have to go that far,” I said carefully. 

“Hmph.” He tossed back his drink. “Sounds boring.” 

“Maybe it is. But there’s such a thing as right and wrong.” 

“I don’t care for that. All that exists is what is good and bad for myself.”

“What a selfish way to live.” 

“It’s a way to survive.” 

“And how are you surviving with that guilt weighing you down?” 

He sniffed. “Is that what you call it?” 

“That’s what I call someone trying to learn a slave’s name.”

He chuckled. “Well. I suppose that’s a question.” He examined his nails. “I don’t think that’s guilt. I think that’s entertaining your fancies in order to keep you from leaving this table. But if this is the way you treat my olive branch, maybe I should have brought her over.” 

“Alright, I don’t bloody care what you do anymore, I am finished with this conversation.” I rose from my seat again, this time looking the boy in the eye. A faint shiver went up my spine, but I forced myself to look. “Do I have your permission to finally leave this table, Right Hand?” I waited impatiently for a snide comment I was sure would come.

He looked up at me solemnly. “Do you know someone named Margret?” He asked. 

My knuckles went white from gripping the edge of the table. 

“No,” I said. 

“Oh,” he sighed.

“Why do you ask that?” 

“I don’t know. Just curious, I suppose.” 

“Curious – why?” I hunched closer and he blinked at me in surprise as he leaned back. 

“I told you,” he said. “You sound like her.”

“And who is she?” 

The boy chuckled as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Just family, mate, nothing more. Promise it’s not some old broad I’m fucking.” He made a face. “The mental image on that… Well, it doesn’t matter who she is anymore, pretty sure she’s dead.” 

“Dead.” 

“You look pale, my friend.” Hatter raised an eyebrow as he slowly stood from his seat. “Missed connection, yeah?”

“I… Yes,” I muttered. “I wish I could have met someone like that.”

“Trust me, I doubt you would.” The hatter played with a sack of pounds on his belt before taking one out and laying it on the table. “The last thing she did was go mad. Killed a servant. Not sure you’d want to associate with a murderer.” 

“Right. Of course.” I fixed my cloak over my shoulders. Are you letting me go, then?” 

“Sure,” he stretched his arms. “This was nice. Nostalgic.” 

I bowed my head politely before rushing towards the door. “Sure, pleasure to meet you.” 

He followed close at my heels. Well, that was to be expected with only one way out of the tavern. But it wasn’t helping my stomach. And my heart pounded as he opened the door for me. Did I look a certain way? How did I appear in his eyes? I couldn’t tell what I hid, and what I didn’t. There seemed to be no end to the things he might know. And his cantor was slow and even, even laughing to himself as he helped me down the steps. It could have been a bluff. I could have been about to be taken. There would be guards right outside. 

But there weren’t. Out into the summer heat, I strained my head toward the way we’d come from. On the other side, the palace on the crest of a hill stood as a foreboding shadow over the Capital. The road was filled with partiers, and not a set of armor in sight. 

Well, that didn’t make any sense either. He couldn’t have been able to get anyone’s attention in that short a time. I still had precious moments to escape. There was still time. Perhaps I could put this all behind me. Perhaps he thought nothing of me. 

“My friend.” The hatter caught my arm as I turned to go. He frowned thoughtfully, his grip tightening. My heart was in my throat. I forced myself to look into those golden eyes. So many things could have been going on in there. So many things he could know. So many things that could destroy me.

After what felt like minutes, he slowly released me, letting his arm swing down to his side. “Never mind. Enjoy the festival.” He tipped his hat, then turned toward the direction of the palace. 

I went running and didn’t look back. 

I was still running when I plunged into the rabbit hole. The tunnels were a pleasantly cool, but the darkness took getting used to. The shimmering torchlight was the only guide I had. It created shadows on the walls and imaginary figures that followed me at every angle and fold. I kept expecting to hear footsteps. My grip tightened on the handle. I kept tripping over nothing but dust. Only when I was halfway down the tunnel did I realize he still had my knife. It was replaceable, untraceable, but still. What else had I forgotten? That bag was gone, along with all of the supplies I’d intended for the others. Hopefully that girl got some use out off them. 

The worst realization, the worst understanding of what had just happened, that was what truly ate away at me, though. 

Margret had lied to me. 

Her brother was more than alive, he was going to be the Right Hand of the Queen. He was a monster. 

I took a deep breath as I tried to let logic win out against the unprecedented fear. I was making assumptions. Family, right? Perhaps not a brother. Or if he was, there had to be a good reason. She was still the same Margret, wasn’t she? She must have felt strongly enough to pretend that her brother was dead. After seeing him, I suppose I could understand. This couldn’t have been that big of a issue. Perhaps this could even work in our favor, somehow. Maybe. Unlikely. But he was open to speaking with me. Unless that too, was a ruse. 

But she had left the castle for a reason. There must have been more to that story. I had no place asking questions, I hadn’t even told her everything of myself. But trust, trust was something we were going to need. And trust was something I was finding in shorter and shorter supply. 

Between the fear of what he could have known was the utter confusion of having to rewrite an ally’s story in my head. 

It might have been better to go back to my room and get my thoughts in order. Perhaps then, I could come up with a proper strategy. At the very least, I’d given him nothing. Nothing but my face. That was a problem, but not an unsolvable one. I’d just have to hide it more. Better. Get an audience with those bloody scribes to see if they had any knowledge of Margret’s cloak. It would come in handy if we were to have any hope in making this project larger. 

“Quill!” 

I held up the torch to see Winnies’ eyes shining like rubies in the firelight. 

“Winnie?” I called out to her quickly approaching form. “What are you doing all the way out here?” 

She fell into my arms and I knew something was wrong. She never touched me like this, not since before. When she looked up, I could see the tears in her eyes. I held the torch to the side to keep the sparks at bay. She was shaking. Tentatively, I wrapped my arm around her to rub her shoulder. 

“Winnie?” I whispered. The tears broke, and she sobbed into my chest. 

Something was wrong. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. 

“Winnie, you need to talk to me,” I murmured. “Please. Tell me what’s wrong. Did the girls, fight, what happened?” 

Her sobs grew louder. She hiccuped, coughed, and stained my blouse with wet tears. “I… I can’t.” 

“Please.” 

“I didn’t think – I thought it would have been easy. I didn’t think… I didn’t… I just… Quill, where were you? We needed you!” 

“Winnie.” I gripped her shoulder tightly and forced her to face me. “Tell me what happened.” 

Her face was hollow. “I… I told her to be careful. I told her. But she wasn’t.” 

I went running. 

We weren’t far from the braziers. I threw the torch down to the side as we flew through the tunnels towards the center. I could already hear voices from here. More sobs. More fear. Yelling. Crying. Screaming. Grief-ridden wails. 

I gritted my teeth as I tried to push myself harder. I was out of breath again. I barely noticed. My feet felt like they were nothing. I didn’t have weight. I just needed to run. My family needed me. 

Angie was the one to hold them close when I was gone. She looked over her shoulder to me heaving in the doorway of the mess hall, then went back to holding the girls together in their little circle by the fire. There were tear tracks on her face. She held her mouth in a tight, firm line as she pressed her forehead against Mary’s. The baby was crying louder than he had been in weeks.

“I told her not to go,” Sylph said from the doorframe. She unpeeled herself from the wall where she’d been watching them and rolled her shoulders like a cat. “And I thought she wasn’t. That’s why I didn’t go after her. I didn’t think she’d be that stupid.” 

Everything felt cold again.

“No.” 

“Quill!” I jumped as Margret flew in just behind Winnie. She was out of breath and red-faced, but she had the energy to grimace when she saw me. “Oh thank God, you’re alright. I… I thought, after Jessie…” 

“What happened?” 

Margret immediately paled. Winnie ran to the other girls with a whimper. Angie pulled her into her arms, then let her take her place as she slowly stood up from the quietly grieving flock. Her shoulders were hunched as she slowly turned around to us. That quiet grief slowly morphed into anger as her eyes settled on me. 

“Where were you?” She muttered.

“I was… I was getting supplies.” 

“You don’t have any supplies.” 

“I was attacked.” I took a shaky step toward Angie. “Where’s…” 

“Dead.” 

“Oh.” My back panged. 

She glared me down like I had been the one. “If you had been there, you could have been able to dissuade her.” 

“That isn’t fair,” Margret interrupted. “Jessie didn’t even tell anyone, just Winnie and Sylph.” 

“She might have told Quill, if Quill was here.” 

“Quill was against any human going up top from the start! You think Jessie would have shared her plans with him?” 

“Margret.” I shook my head. “It’s… it’s fine. I just want to know what happened.” 

Angie took a low, deep breath. She clenched and unclenched her fingers. She was trying. I could feel it too. That anger. There was no one to fight. No one to hurt back. Nothing was going to make this any better. “The girl was impatient,” she muttered the word like it was poison. “She wanted to go. Now. She wanted to see this stupid future you promised her. So she tried to go up herself to get a carriage. That cloak of hers wasn’t enough. Anyone could see she was just a human, left unattended. She was a sitting duck up there from the beginning.” 

“At least she died quickly,” Sylph shrugged. 

“What did you just say, Duchess noble?” As much as Angie breathed fire, I could see the anger rising in Margret too. The both of them stared at the girl.

“Think about it.” The blue-haired girl raised a hand. “I saw it. I didn’t want to, but I did. And I know she never betrayed any of us. If she hadn’t fought back against those monsters, she would have lived long enough to be tortured and say whatever it is they might want out of her. Instead, she fought to her last. She died a fighter, like she wanted. Isn’t that what we’re doing? Fighting?” 

“No one wants to die like a fighter,” I muttered. “That’s not what this is supposed to be about. We aren’t martyrs. We’re trying to survive. We’re trying to live like normal people. That’s all we want. No gallantry, no noble war. It would do you well to remember that.” 

“Whatever,” Sylph sighed. She looked over at the grieving girls with a faint frown. I wished I could have been able to join them. “Now I’m out a vetter for gaining the Duchess’s favor. We’ll have to pick a new human.” 

“You’re heartless,” snarled Margret. She took a step closer, but a look from me had her backing down again.

“Not a chance,” Angie growled. “You aren’t coming near my girls. You’re as bad as the rest of them. We should have never trusted nobles. You could have stopped her too, I won’t forget that. She told you, too. And you were there. You could have stopped it. You could have done anything, you damn noble.” 

Sylph wasn’t shaken. “I did what I could. I told her not to go as many times as I could, and she did it anyways. I followed her, and she was found on her own. She wasn’t careful. And there were too many men to butt in. They would have done the same to me. There was no right answer there. I realize you’re hurting, but Jessie was stupid. And stupid people don’t live long in this world.” 

“You take that back!” Millie screamed from the circle.

“Well, it’s true. She brought this upon herself. And if we keep focusing on death, we’ll never have life, now will we? You’re all grieving, but we still need to send me off. There is a schedule to keep. We need to get used to death if you truly think rebellion is the answer.” 

The circle went quiet. Margret and Angie were both hunched, both on the verge of lunging after the Duchess noble. This was going nowhere. 

“Sylph… Sylph isn’t wrong. And fighting each other isn’t going to solve anything.” I rubbed my eyes. The pangs in my back weren’t going away. No matter what I did. I promised myself I wouldn’t lose another one. But here I was. And I couldn’t take back today. I couldn’t blame myself. I couldn’t do anything to fix something that had already happened. Everyone was still, and I was the only one that could seem to think through the pain. 

Perhaps I did truly need to look to the future. 

“Not you too,” Angie’s face actually broke. She gritted her teeth as she tried to look mad. But I could see the way her eyes shimmered. She couldn’t keep it up anymore. That hurt the most. I wished she would just be mad at me. To see her so heartbroken was so much worse. “You’re all the same, your nobles, aren’t you? Jessie’s dead, and all you care about are your little war games.” 

“Angie.” I took her hand. She could feel it shaking, I was certain. She had to see it. I was hurting, too. “I promised myself I wasn’t going to lose someone else. Not one of ours. And I broke that promise. And I’m sorry. I feel it. As much as you do. But we can’t let her die in vain now. We can’t just stop here and grieve. We have to keep going. We have to. Please.” 

“I’m not sending someone else. They’ll die. They always die.” She dropped her head onto my shoulder. “Evaline is dead. Jessie’s dead. Who else is next, Quill? How many more of us?” 

“None of us,” I sighed. “Not again. I’m not going to send a human out. We can’t take that risk.” 

Angie’s eyebrows furrowed. She rose her head to blink blearily at me through the tears. “Then who?” 

I sighed. We couldn’t afford to lose another pair of hands, but there was no other way. We had to.

“I’m sending Margret.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Muse: Apocalyptica - Broken Pieces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCN9IjQs84s  
> Natasha Blume - Black Sea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8DFh-JmiS0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains: female masturbation, femdom, cunnilingus, fingering and generally vanilla lesbians.

MARGRET

“No.” 

“Margret, there’s no choice in the matter. You should be preparing to leave.” 

“No.” 

I slammed the door closed when we were in his room. He looked like he’d spent the last few hours in hell. His shirt was a mess, there were purple stains over the collar, covered in grime, bloody knuckles and a lilting gait. With nothing but the clothes on his back. He didn’t even have his knife. 

He slowly sat down at his desk. His bones seemed to settle. “Do we have to do this now?” 

“Of course we do!” I snarled. 

“Jessie is dead.” He played with the dying candle wax. His eyes reflected the light like glass. “We should at least have a moment to grieve. I know you didn’t know her that well-” 

“How… How dare you…” I couldn’t feel the nails digging into my hands, but the blood certainly dripped down. The room was red. “She was one of our own. She was my friend. She was yours. I was here to protect them. You think I’m here because I don’t CARE? You know who didn’t care? Sylph!” 

I could still see her stupid face. Even when she first told be what happened. That she had seen it. That she had just let it happen. I hadn’t felt rage like this in a while. Those people were suffering because of her. Winnie was suffering. 

“I think you’re here because you’re upset with a decision I made.” He slowly peeled himself away from the candle and turned to face me. “But it’s the only logical one we have left.” 

“That’s besides the point. Sylph – what Sylph did. What she said. You can’t ignore that.” I found myself pacing. “And do you really think you’re playing a good move taking away your only usable piece? I’m the only one of us that can go up top safely. I have the cloak, for God’s sake! You can use it if you want, have it, I don’t care, but the fact remains that the two of us are the only nobles that care enough to actually help those girls out. What does Sylph do all day? Help those scribes? The ones that don’t help us?”

It was the first time I found his calm expression so infuriating. How could he not care? How could he act like someone hadn’t just died? How did he not see what was wrong with that Duchess noble? He’d known them far longer than me, and here he was acting like a stranger had just died. Not someone that had shared meals with us. Shared jokes with us.

I gulped down a breath, and tried to speak slower. “I... I care about the rebellion. I want it to happen. But Sylph’s a part of the same group that have been snubbing us for ages with the excuse that they don’t want to get into politics. Excuses we’ve only ever heard from her mouth, mind you. But I know those bastards know more about this than they let on. They have to know something, sitting back with all the knowledge they have.” God knew Alexander was hiding something, if he knew my name. “There’s an entire group of nobles that know where we are, and we’re at their mercy. We’re just sitting here.” 

“I aim to get the scribes more invested in our mission,” he said. 

“And how do you plan to do that?”

“That’s what I’m sill trying to figure out. We have to have something they need, and I don’t know what that is yet. Perhaps with Sylph down they’ll need a runner. Or perhaps they have others. We’ll have to wait and see. But that is a later problem. The fact remains that Angie is not about to let go of any of her own.” He sighed. “Jessie is a blow. She was one of us. And now she’s gone. And everything is real. I understand that. I knew they were difficult to control, but I never expected… Not Jessie…” His expression was cracking. My heart throbbed. 

He swallowed. “We can’t put the humans in danger. They’re not fighters. They’re just people. Any one of them could get caught any time and taken, hurt, killed, worse, I can’t even stomach what worse could mean. But they want to leave. Anyone would. And now they’re afraid. Being down here makes one illogical. I know it’s done its work on me.” 

I grit my teeth. He was right. I hated that he was right. We couldn’t depend on them. But… “But this is war,” I said. “I hate having to put people in harms’ way, but Angie has to understand that. We can’t do this because of a terrible mistake that wouldn’t have happened if Sylph has stopped her.” 

“I’m surprised you’re not on the side of protecting the girls.” 

“I am. I want to be. But I…” I bit my lip. “But I don’t know. I’m needed here. And I thought you didn’t care.” 

“I care more than you realize. But if I stop functioning to grieve, then who’s going to be the one that keeps things running?” 

“You don’t have to do this alone,” I said softly.

“It seems I do. Because you’re not thinking about this. Angie is a mother first, and a fighter second. She isn’t logical, and I don’t intend to fight with her on that. We need to work with what we have. And that means relying on Sylph,” I flinched, “and using you where I can more strategically. I need you to go to the Duchess to show her that what we intend is serious. And I expect you to make sure that they will promise to do their part.” 

“How do you even know you can trust Sylph? Why do you keep thinking that anything she says has any weight? This could all be a ruse, for what we know. She just let Jessie go. She didn’t do anything - even Winnie did something!” I stormed forward. “This whole thing reeks, you know. Everything about Sylph. From the way she holds herself, to the way she talks, the way she refuses to let us see those damn scribes. She doesn’t care. You know she doesn’t.”

He slowly looked up at me looming over him. “She wouldn’t be the only one holding secrets.” 

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I met your brother today.” 

I could feel my heart drop. He kept his eyes steady on mine. 

“He’s dead,” I muttered. 

“When he pinned me to the ground, he appeared very much alive.” 

“He did what?!” 

“I see you’re admitting it.” 

“I… I…” I growled. “It’s more complicated than that. My brother is dead. The person that hurt you isn’t the brother I know.” 

“Just because he changed his personality over time, doesn’t make him a different person, but it does make you a liar.” 

“I’m not a liar!” I snarled. “It’s – he’s not Rettah, okay? He’s nothing like Rettah. Rettah is sweet, and kind, and caring, and shares his food with strangers and humans.” I used shaking fingers to count off the list. “Rettah has a sweet tooth and he spends his nights sleeping with as many pillows as he can find. Rettah cried when our father left. Rettah held my hand when I thought we were going to die because he didn’t want me to be scared either. Rettah is… is…” I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even finish the sentence. I could still see his face, his smile. I dropped my hand and clenched it into a fist. “Asentual is… A monster. A stupid, terrible, parasitic monster that took over my brother. And now he’s whatever you met. Something evil. I would never call that thing my own flesh and blood.” 

“Margret, I didn’t mean it like that.” Now he was afraid for me. There was the Quill I knew. The one who cared. The one who saw the pain. It made me want to smile and tell him I would be okay, that I would listen to whatever he wanted. But I couldn’t. 

“He’s a slaver, right?” I muttered. “Or he might as well be, at this point. I’ve heard plenty of things up there. How he’s the Right Hand to be. All the sorts of things he’ll do to women. You don’t need to remind me of what that thing is. But let me be very clear.” I lowered my head to the Lord nobles’ level. Pity. Pity in his eyes. And I was the loyal dog ignoring the instinct to give him my paw. “He’s not my brother, Quill. He went out one day into the Capital for the first time, and when he returned, his eyes were yellow and he was forsaking the name his mother gave him. If that’s my brother, I’d kill him for that alone. But he’s not. He’s another being entirely.”

His eyebrows furrowed. “What? How could something like that happen to a person?” 

“I don’t know, and I don’t care to know. Magic?” I leaned back against his desk and watched the candlelight. “It doesn’t matter. My brother is dead.” 

Quill turned to the stray papers on his desk. “He… He forced me to talk with him.”

“I don’t care.” 

“You don’t want to know what he said to me?”

It felt like glass pushed beneath my skin just to speak his name. “No.” 

“He asked about you.” 

“Did you tell him about us? About me?” 

“No. Nothing like that, I promise. I didn’t even bring you up. He said it on his own. He just… He said we were similar, in the way that we spoke.” 

I laughed. There was a chill in it. “Of course he said that. We have the same philosophy, which contradicts literally everyone else.” 

He frowned. “He seemed apologetic, if a little self centered.” 

“I don’t care what he seemed to be. I know what he is. And he is not a good person.” I shivered. “I don’t even like that he said my name. It’s disgusting to think about.” 

“I’ll stop talking about him, then,” he muttered.

Good. I needed him out of my mind. The both of us went quiet, and I took the opportunity to truly look Quill over. His knuckles were shaking. “Is… Is he the reason you look the way you do?” 

“Yes.” 

I was seeing red again. “And you still think there’s anything redeemable about something like that? I’ll kill him for what he did to you!” 

“It was a very long conversation, Margret,” he said softly. “I don’t want you killing him.” 

“I bet he did it just to try to get you to say something that could get you incriminated. He’s right up there with the Queen. You were very, very close, Quill. You could have gotten hurt. Killed. Found.” 

“I know. I made a mistake. I was trying to save someone. But all I did was waste valuable time, endanger myself, and get Jessie killed.” His shoulders slumped. His eyes were focused on the papers without focus, and his knuckles trembled. 

Tentatively, I reached out a hand. I had to stop myself. I shouldn’t. I wanted to. But I shouldn’t. 

“You didn’t kill Jessie,” I muttered. 

“I might as well have. If I had been here, I would have been able to stop her.” 

“She wouldn’t have told you.” 

“I could have been more aware.” 

“There could be a hundred what ifs, but all…” I bit my lip. “What we’ve got right now is what we’ve got. And that consists of a dwindling supply of resources that are going to need to be constantly topped up by both you and I.” 

“If all we have left is what we have now, then we need someone to replace Jessie. And that’s you.”

“I’m too valuable to be taken off the board, Quill.” 

“You’re too valuable not be sent as good faith, Margret.”

I glared at him. But he was still quivering, and I couldn’t hold it. I sighed, tipped my head back, and realized the stubborn ass just wasn’t worth fighting. We had to be a team. And I needed to stop. 

“Fine. Fine, I’ll see the damned Duchess. But what do we do about Sylph?” 

“There’s nothing to be done.” 

“She’s a problem waiting to happen.” 

“So far, she appears to be useful. She’s the reason we’ll be able to see the Duchess in the first place. What would we do if we didn’t have a Duchess noble vouching for us, go to the Lord that won’t leave his room? Go to the Queen that you wish so dearly to kill? Sylph is the key to the only royal we can still talk to. I’ve heard enough about the King to know we shouldn’t even consider him.”

“That could be a lie. All of this could be a lie.”

“She saved us, Margret. Me and the others. We could have died out there the night we left the brothel. But she found Angie, and she brought us here. I’ll forever be in her debt for that. What would she have to gain by going back on her word now? After all this time? What, is she raising us to slaughter?” 

I hissed through my teeth. “I don’t know. But you have to admit there’s something wrong with her. She just let one of your own die. There’s something wrong with her eyes. I just have this feeling – the way she acts – I can’t stand it.” I could recall that expression. The subtle undertone of madness hidden in logic. Something soulless. Something that grinned at me and thought about pushing me over the edge of a cliff. Something that given me a cloak and a knife and told me to go be a murderer. That wasn’t something a person was supposed to do.

“Have you ever seen Duchess nobles before?”

“Of course I have.” I rolled my eyes. 

“But have you seen female Duchess nobles?”

I paused. “Why?” 

“The more thoroughbred of the group tend to have the lack of outward compassion. Perhaps it’s a stereotype, but I’ve seen it often enough. I understand if you feel like there is something off about her, but I merely see her as she is. A person trying to help us.” He paused. “Is this why you don’t want to go?” 

“What? No! I don’t want to go because I feel like this is a fruitless endeavour that will probably end up with me being held at knifepoint in the middle of the Wonderland forest by a score of Duchess guards.” 

“But you have a gut feeling.” 

“I guess.” I turned away.

“I’m trying to take you seriously here, Margret.” He leaned in closer. “if you have a gut feeling, you need to tell me.” 

I bit my lip. “You don’t trust me.” 

“I trust you.” 

“But my brother-“

“I knew there had to be a reason. And I believe. I need to believe someone, in my life.” He sighed. “If you have a gut feeling about something being off with Sylph, then I’ll listen. I’ll make sure she’s followed.” 

Immediately brightening, I uncrossed my arms. Maybe he wasn’t such a stubborn ass after all. “Thank you. I appreciate it, even the smallest thing could keep us from being found out.”

He nodded his head. “Make sure that she doesn’t get up to any mischief when she’s in the Duchess palace. We don’t want her betraying us.” 

I stared at him. 

“Well?” he said. 

“You made me walk right into that.” 

“You’re the one that wanted to make sure she’s not up to a nefarious plot. The only way to do that is to follow her. So follow her.” 

“I – I can’t do that! I’m needed here!” 

“While Sylph continues to hoodwink us all?”

Growling, with nothing left to say, I looked helplessly from his desk to the door. “We… You don’t even have the cloak, you’ll get caught again! We don’t have a carriage!” 

“You can leave your cloak here. If you’re patient, Sylph will have a carriage arranged soon enough. And the both of you can go to the Duchess in the next few days.” 

“Quill, you know this a mistake.”

“I’m not your superior, Margret, but please listen to me. This once. This is only chance we have here.” He sighed. “Please.” 

…..

Across from me, the Duchess noble was still smirking. Her hands were gingerly placed in her lap, the dark blue cloak tipping from her shoulders down onto the velvet cushions and landing by her thighs. The delicate pastel dress was cut low around her shoulders. I could see every slow rise and fall of her chest, and every swallow. But other than that, she was still as a statue. Watching me. Eying me. I hated it.

“You look better, you know,” she said.

“Excuse me?” I growled. 

“Than before, I mean.” She flicked her eyes down to my feet, then slowly moved them back up. I’m not sure what caught her eye. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, just black buckled shoes, a dull red pleated skirt and an old blouse that had somehow made it through the years from the day I left the castle. The ruddy brown cloak didn’t feel the same as the sleek black of my familiar skin. Hopefully Quill would get good use out of it. 

“Thanks, I suppose I was in a state when Quill brought me in.” I turned away. I wasn’t particularly interested in speaking with her. Perhaps the Lord noble had cheated me, but I intended to tail her as needed. That didn’t mean I had to like her. 

She smiled serenely. “I’m surprised you don’t remember me.” 

My eye twitched. Speaking nonsense again. “What do you mean?”

“Who were you chasing that night you fell down the Rabbit Hole?”

Ah.

Slowly, I sank back into the carriage and stared up at the ceiling. 

“Right,” I muttered. 

“You’re about to tell me all Duchess nobles look the same, aren’t you?” 

“Well, don’t they?”

“I’ve never found a difference between Queen nobles, myself.” 

“I’m sorry for trying to kill you,” I grunted under my breath. “I wasn’t in my right mind.” 

“For all the soliloquys you go on lamenting your horrid killing spree, you seem the least broken up about the prospect of killing me. Now why is that?” She unlaced and laced her hands together. We hit a hard bump in the road, and she barely moved. 

“Well, I don’t know, Duchess noble, maybe it’s because Jessie is dead because of you?” 

“Jessie is dead because Jessie was stupid.” 

She didn’t falter at the murderous glare. “You know I tried to kill you, right?” I said. “So why tempt fate?” 

“Because I believe you’re better than that, Margret.” Her eyes twinkled in a way that curdled my stomach. “You’re a different person now thanks to Quill, aren’t you?” 

I grunted. “I guess.” I wasn’t in the mood for these stupid conversations. This would be my fate, for days. Weeks. It had already been too long. I was going to lose my mind. 

I closed my eyes, thinking that she would leave it be. And she did. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. I mistakenly thought she would allow me the chance to sleep.

But then I heard the sound of silk against silk, coupled with the creaking of wood. By the time I had opened my eyes, she was already beside me. Smiling that same daunting smile. I tried to back up, but this carriage was far too small to get away. The roughly hewn wooden backing stabbed into my side as I pressed up against it. I looked in futility to the other side of the carriage. 

“Winnie seemed quite upset that you left,” she remarked. 

“Yes…” I said tentatively. As much as I could recall the tearful hugs from all of them as they bid me goodbye, I couldn’t let memories like that distract me from her. Her eyes were wrong. Cold. Chilling. I bet she was as calculating as I was struggling to be. “She gave me an extra apple for good luck.” 

“She quite likes you.” 

“She’s a good friend.” I looked at her hand the moment it moved, but she was just adjusting her position. “She told me she would keep the girls in line until I got back. I appreciate her ability to get things done.” 

The Duchess noble stared at me for a moment. I was waiting for something. A knife? 

But then she fell back against the seat, and burst into the strangest giggling fit I’d ever seen. Her chest heaved. It lasted so long that I was starting to glance to the free side of the carriage with even more longing. When she was done, she wiped her mouth and turned back to me. 

“You’re quite oblivious, aren’t you?” 

“I’d like to think not…” 

“Did you know Winnie wanted to bed you?”

I gaped at her. 

“Because I did,” she continued, leaning back against the cushions as she did. “And Quill knew it too.” 

“No- No she didn’t…” I shook my head numbly, still staring. “She couldn’t have.” 

“You may not realize this, but you have many of the girls enamored of you, you know. Everyone is clambering for a taste of someone so noble. She liked the Lord noble for a time, but she saw that there was no chance. And then she caught whiff of someone just as good.” 

“That doesn’t make any sense! I’m… I’m a girl!” 

“Since when does that matter?” She asked. 

I used my arms for emphasis as I struggled to think of anything through a red face. This had to be another tactic of hers. This was ridiculous. And yet it was working perfectly. I couldn’t think of anything to say, and she had the most detestable grin on her face. She didn’t even need to say anything. “The… The lack of phallus, to begin!” 

“Cock or no cock, you’re quite handsome, Margret.” My mouth hung open.

“Once again, a girl!” I stuttered. “This conversation is stupid, are you just trying to rile me up? That’s what this is, isn’t it! Make up lies to confound me! That’s just like you, isn’t it, using misdirection to hide what you’re truly planning.” 

“Not at all. I’m simply stating a fact.” She drew closer, I hate that she drew closer. She was still smiling as she peered up at me under thick black eyelashes. All of this reeked of foul intent. I needed to get away. “Tall, wide shoulders. Strong enough to sling women over her back without a thought. Covered in mysterious scars. A face like an eagle, bold and mythic. You’re the very epitome of a knightly figure, casting a shadow that makes your enemies tremble. You might not see it, but every time you tell a speech you have this confidence about you. And that draws admirers like flies, for better and for worse…” She drew a finger along one of the curls of my hair. I stared at it for a second as I tried to process what she’d said. 

“What are you saying? I don’t understand – stop playing these ridiculous games. I’m sick of all that you hide from Quill and the others.” 

“You’re not that stupid, Margret. You know what I’m trying to say.” She looked up at me. “I’m telling you what I see in you. Perhaps you’re also brash, stubborn, simple, and pigheaded sometimes, but I like that lack of tact in your actions. You come from a place of passion. And passion is sorely lacking in the Duchess Kingdom.” Her eyebrows furrowed delicately. “You like Quill, don’t you?”

I turned away. I couldn’t even speak. My face must have matched my damned hair.

“No need to be bashful. You’re sweet to care for someone so deeply. You love him enough to allow him to dictate you how he pleases, with nothing more than a nod of your head. But that man is hurt.” 

I bit my lip. 

“You can remain silent if you like,” she muttered. “But it’s obvious. He buries himself in his work to forget the past, and that can work to our advantage. But it leaves you alone, unloved, unwanted, untouched… At least for now.” 

“For… Now?” 

“Have you ever thought what might happen when all is said and done in this war?” She was idly playing with my hair, drawing it around her finger and tugging it against the natural curl. I watched her with a shiver slowly rolling up my spine, trying to process her question while maintaining a careful eye on her. 

“Quill… I suppose he’d be in some kind of advising office,” I said. “And I…”

“Queen.” 

I frowned. “I suppose, yes.” 

“A Queen would be able to do what she wants.”

“I don’t want to be that kind of Queen.”

“Of course not,” Sylph crooned. “You’d want to be the kind of Queen that humans and nobles alike can look to for a source of temperance. You would be virtuous. And Quill would see you as just that. You and him would have time together, the both of you. He could finally heal from old wounds, and you would be there, an experienced lover, to take him into your arms and teach him what passion can entail in the bedroom.”

“I’m…” I muttered. “I’m not… I don’t like where this conversation is going.” 

“Not experienced? Not someone as handsome as you?” 

“I never…” I couldn’t look her in the eye. “Why do you keep calling me handsome?”

“Not even a kiss?” She pointedly ignored me. 

I grit my teeth. “I suppose… But it wasn’t what I wanted.” My shoulder relaxed, but I carefully watched were she placed her hands as she traced a finger around my collarbone. “It was a joke. She was just trying to make fun of me.” 

“She? And here you are saying you that a girl can’t love you.” 

“But it’s not the same! Everything she did…” I bit my lip. Jokes were all she ever did. Crude, demeaning, not caring about herself in the process. I shivered to remember the face she made when I beat her into the ground. Like she wanted it. All some kind of twisted logic I never understood. It curdled my stomach. The things she wanted to do to me. The things she wanted me to do to her. It just made everything worse. “It wasn’t real.”

“Then it wasn’t a real first kiss. You still haven’t had one.”

“I’ve had a real first kiss!” I squawked. 

“With who?” 

I closed my mouth quickly as I stared at her. I quietly shook my head. 

“Quill, then,” she breathed. 

“How did you – I mean, I – didn’t, ah…” 

“Winnie wasn’t exactly light in her attempts to woo you. Quill noticed it easily from afar, and I simply watched the drama unfold. It was all rather bittersweet. You left a girl heartbroken, and the man that took your kiss refused to keep you. And yet he feels jealousy.”

“Quill likes me?” I nearly squeaked it out as she pressed her lips against my neck. Slowly, she pulled away, and I stumbled as far back as I could. She frowned.

“In a way. But he is in no position to receive your affections, you know that. In the meanwhile, is it not better to fill your time with practice?” She moved back to me, draping herself over my thigh as she trailed her fingers slowly up from my stomach. They stopped over my shoulders, holding them as she settled in my lap.

“What are you doing?” 

“What I like.” Her cold eyes drifted over mine. “You like to think of me as hiding things, Margret. But you have it the opposite. I only do what I like. Nothing more, nothing less. That is how I have always been.” 

“You – you say what you like, but I know there has to be something about you,” I stuttered. “No noble would help us without knowing the true madness of Wonderland.” 

She drew closer, until her chest was brushing mine, and her lips were inches away. I could feel her breath on my neck. I could barely contain my shivering. This was wrong. She was no better than Sigil. I had to control myself. I had to push her off. I had to break through the haze. 

“I’ve known that there was something wrong with Wonderland from the moment the Duchess deigned to tell me,” she whispered. “My position with the scribes was given because of it. Wheels are turning, Margret. You and Quill are not the only good nobles in this world. There have always been others. But you are in a strategic position, one we have never had before. All it will take now is the first push, and a long line of dominoes will begin to fall. At the end is the Queen herself. You will kill her, if you continue to do as has been prepared for you.”

“Are we just puppets?” I murmured. Her voice was captivating, when she wasn’t busy trying to sound like she knew everything and said nothing. When she looked up at me, her eyes were almost warm. I was going mad. I could feel it. Madness, ebbing away at me. It was terrifying. I knew it should be, and yet here I was, doing nothing. My hands sat at my sides. Any moment now, I could push her away, and I didn’t. 

“We are the puppets,” she mussed. “You are the ones deciding whether to use us.” A hand drew itself through my hair. She took a hold of my cheek, then pulled me in to close the gap.

Her lips were soft, wet, and nimble. My eyes widened when I felt the tongue that danced along my teeth. Shivers went up my spine. 

I shoved her off of me gasping and shaking. She landed on the floor with a jostle of the carriage.

“What are you trying to do?” 

“Fuck you, obviously.” She picked herself up gracefully. Her body fell back onto the cushions across from me with a faint pink to her cheeks. The fabric of her dress was askew, but she didn’t bother to fix it. She licked her lips, and I turned away. 

“I’m not interested.” 

“You’re as red as I’ve ever seen you, and you’re telling me you aren’t interested?” 

“Just stay the hell away from me. Over there. Keep your hands in your lap and away from me for the remainder of this journey.” That growing warmth between my legs would go away with time, I just had to think about something else. Anything else. “I don’t even know why you seem to think you could get away with that. You’re a sly noblewoman who’s never once seen the truth of Wonderland, the only thing you feel when you touch me is debauchery and hedonism.” 

“Is that so?” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her hands moving in her lap. “It’s true, I don’t see myself with you for the rest of my life, but is that such a crime? Can we not enjoy each other for the moment? Is sexual pleasure so evil?” 

“Sexual pleasure is just a vice. It’s an illusion. Just like alcohol, and opiates, and whatever other methods of instant gratification make you happy for the briefest of moments.” I bit hard into the side of my cheek. 

“We are people, Margret. Not just nobles. And as people, we strive to look for things that make us happy. Whether in an evil world or not, looking for methods of comfort are what make us alive. Would you rather live miserably?” 

I heard a quiet moan, and flushed as I craned my head further away from her. “What are you doing?” I asked. 

“Masturbating.” 

“Well, stop it.” 

“We have to spend two weeks in this carriage, Margret. I would love to spend it enjoying your company instead of hating each other.” 

“I would like to be alone with my thoughts and not listening to you touch yourself.” 

“Aren’t you curious?” 

“No.” 

“Have you ever touched yourself?” 

My face heated.

“I’m not hearing an – ah – answer there, Margret.” 

“Stop it!” Two weeks. Two weeks, I couldn’t last two weeks. I’d rather walk it. I could make it through Wonderland forest, right? Just past the wastes outside the Capital, through the forest where my father was killed, south to the eternal blizzarding winter, yes I could manage that. I could absolutely manage that if I didn’t have to listen to a bloody Duchess noble shoving her fingers into her cunt. 

“Margret.” 

“Stop.” 

“Margret.”

“Stop talking to me.” 

“Margret, look at me,” she ordered.

Slowly, I turned my head. 

Sylph lay back against the cushions with her thighs split open. Her mouth was parted, her chest on full display, her breasts heaving. And her slit was wet and spread as wide as she could make it with her fingers. The muscles twitched, and she shivered in response. 

“Please,” she whimpered softly. Her mouth was hiding a smile behind a moan. 

I immediately turned away with my mouth tightly shut. 

“Margret, please…” She purred. 

“Why are you doing this to me?”

The floor of the carriage creaked as I felt the weight shift. Her body sank down beside mine. I could feel the wetness of her fingers stroking my hand as she leaned forward. The heat wasn’t going away this time. It wouldn’t, and it was her fault. She wouldn’t just leave me alone to ignore it. 

“You’re pretty, Margret,” she whispered against my ear. “That’s why. Let’s waste our time away.” 

She held my face in her hands, studying my features with a blush of her own that finally brought red to such a porcelain face. I stared back at her and tried to decide what I even wanted anymore.

“You truly are something, Margret,” she panted. I wanted to turn away, but she made me stay so she could see the way her praise made me flush. I hated it. It was too easy for her.

“I don’t like you,” I tried to protest. “I don’t… I…” 

“Are you sure?” Her eyes were hooded. 

I was shivering all over, my entire body seeming to twitch at every subtle movement of her body. I was acutely aware of her breasts digging into my blouse. I didn’t know where to touch, whether to throw her off or to hold her. 

“You can go to the other side of the carriage, if you’re that afraid,” she muttered. “You can leave, if you truly want.” She pressed her cheek against my chest. “But if you want this, I would be happy to show you things. If you want me. What else are we do to, but wait?” I gulped. She gently took my hands in hers. She held them up, rolling my palms with her thumbs, then placed them against her chest.

Her breasts were pointed. She shivered where I cupped them. Even the barest of touches had her biting her lip and looking coyly up to me. 

I couldn’t ignore it. I couldn’t ignore the heat. “I…” 

“I won’t tell a soul.” She followed my movements with her eyes. “I promise.” 

“I like Quill.”

“I know.” Her lips pressed on mine again, and I stopped thinking. Her tongue was like electricity, jolting me with every moan and languid stroke of it over my bottom lip. I gripped her breasts so tightly that she had to direct me to hold her hips instead. She undressed herself down with one hand and helped me make less of a fool of myself with the other. I did as she directed, stroking her waist, pressing thumbs into the crook of her hips, driving them further as she slipped the rest of her gown off. 

There was a nude woman in my lap, and I wasn’t thinking straight anymore. 

“You’re wearing too many clothes,” she chuckled by my ear. “Let me help, you’re so stilted.” I felt like an idiot raising my arms as she pulled my blouse off. Her eyes ate me alive as she looked me over, from chest down to quivering stomach. 

“I didn’t expect you to be quite so muscled…” The edges of her lips tipped up in a secretive smile. “All that work is made easy when you don’t know when to quit, isn’t it?” I tilted my head back as she pressed her lips to my chest and began to lick down. I let out a nervous moan, glancing to the locked entrance of the carriage and hoping the walls were thick. I didn’t even realize her mouth had made it past my stomach until I felt it. 

“Stop-!” I gasped. I went red at the feeling of her tongue fluttering over my entrance. 

“I didn’t realize how wet you were,” she muttered in between swirls of the appendage. Her teeth nipped my clit, and I bit hard into my hand. Without meaning to, I found my legs sliding apart. The girl was on her knees, probing her tongue and nose against my core and making me whimper as every touch drove the heat to an immeasurable degree. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I wanted to turn away. I couldn’t look. 

But then she stopped. 

“I want your eyes on me, Margret,” she ordered.

“I can’t,” I whimpered. 

“I won’t continue unless you look at me.” 

Slowly, I turned back to look at her. Her slender shoulders were pushed forward as she braced herself against my legs. She smiled against the inside of my thigh, then lolled her tongue out against my slit. My breath hitched, and my hips bucked against the sensation. That slick tongue pushed past my entrance, and her nose settled against my clit. She rubbed against it with every twitch of her mouth, making terrible noises as she pushed my legs further apart. There were deep groove marks in my hand. I could taste blood, but I didn’t dare let it go. I cried out into my hand, shuddered as her fingers probed alongside the terrible tongue, begged her to stop and tugged her hair closer for more. I couldn’t think. I just wanted. 

This wasn’t madness, was it? Madness didn’t feel this good. 

Her fingers pushed past the tongue to stretch deeper. Parting them, pushing my folds apart, she lapped at whatever she could touch. Her lips suctioned around my clit, but before the pleasure turned to pain she backed away and let her fingers do the work. The thrusts were slow at first. But they were too slow. I pressed needily back against the touches, wanting to know what it felt like to have something deep inside. She chuckled against my leg as she nudged them deeper. The squelching of pushing them inside me was almost embarrassing enough to pull away.

She hit something, and I couldn’t contain the noises anymore. I cried out too loud. The driver had to have heard. I was red to the roots of my hair, looking helplessly between the door and her, but she wasn’t stopping. She merely looked back up at me with a smirk, then went back to pushing against that particular spot until I learned to clench my jaw and hold it in. 

“You’re close, aren’t you?” She murmured. “I wonder what you look like when you finish…” 

“Don’t… Don’t say that.” 

“Shh…” Slowly removing her fingers, she brought her other hand and slowly pulled me apart. She glanced at me as I looked down through wild locks of hair, smiled, then dug her tongue in as deep as she could. Fingers dug in further, pulling me apart the deepest she could manage. Everything twitched, pounded and beat with heat, as she plunged her fingers and her tongue as far inside me as I could take. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t do anything but shake until something massive hit me and blood ran down my chin. White dotted my vision, and for a moment, there was nothing wrong with the world. Everything was perfect, if I could just continue to have her what she was doing with her tongue. There was no weight on my shoulders. And I could lie against the cushions of the carriage and be at peace. 

I heaved with effort, watching her through half lidded eyes as she slowly rose to her feet then took a seat beside me. Her hands found mine, held them, and then the rest of her fell against me as she let out a shivering breath.

“How are you feeling?” She asked.

“I don’t know,” I breathed.

She chuckled. “When you’re thinking more clearly, I’ll ask again.”

I closed my eyes. “Is that what people feel? When they do things like that?”

“Yes. That’s why they do it.”

“But they’re all just using each other.”

“Did it feel like you were using me, just now?”

“I…” I flushed. “You didn’t get anything out of it.”

She pushed herself up to meet my eyes. She pressed her lips against my neck, and smiled. “If you’d like to try, I’m still in need.” Flushing, she pressed the rest of herself against me. “I haven’t finished yet.”

Even now, I gaped helplessly at the woman in front of me. “I… I wouldn’t even know what to do.” 

“You felt what I did to you, didn’t you?”

“But I don’t have experience.”

“We’re trying to get you that, aren’t we? I won’t judge you. Come.” She flew from my lap and led me by her hand to the other side of the carriage. Settling back against a seat, she used a leg to push me down onto my hands and knees. From there, she stroked my hair, drew her legs apart, and her lips along with them. I was dumbstruck at what she looked like close up. Her legs were creamy white. But her folds were flush, slick, and twitching faintly in need. 

“Just try. You’d be surprised what works.” 

“Do I need to use my mouth?” I asked apprehensively. I couldn’t help but constantly look back at the wetness of her entrance, the folds that were brushed aside and the clenching needy hole. I brushed my fingers up against her and listened to her whimper.

“You don’t need to.” She smiled. “Fingers are enough.” 

I stared at her for a moment longer, then dug my face into her entrance. Immediately she grasped at my hair, a sharp moan resonating through the carriage. I went red. She was unabashedly making noise and didn’t seem to care who heard. 

“Please be quiet,” I whispered as I pulled back up for air. 

“Why? The driver is trained to be discreet. Let’s just enjoy ourselves.” 

“I… But…”

“Stop thinking like a human, and start thinking like a Wonderlander.” She nudged my shoulder with a foot. “Humans may be just as important, but our values will never be the same.” 

I bit my lip, but I couldn’t think of an answer. 

I pushed my nose back against her clit as I rubbed my tongue against her entrance. Copying what she had done for me, I languidly nuzzled the button that had made me shake as I struggled to find the end of her hole with my wet tongue. But I was as awkward as always. I didn’t know what she liked. She made noises at everything I did, but it couldn’t have all felt good. She was merely spurring me on.

“Margret,” she breathed. “fingers, try the fingers too.”

I flushed as I pushed an appendage up against the entrance, then slowly thrust it inside, keeping my tongue rolling circles around her clit as I felt her shiver around my head. She shook, cried out, and egged me on. More fingers, one after the other, until there were four thrusting inside her and I was wondering how she could take so many. She arched her hips up against them, rolled her hips, and whimpered when my teeth grazed by her clit before they joined the insertion being pushed inside her. 

And then I felt her legs catch my head. They closed around my head, clenched tight and I was buried in her. I couldn’t breath. She was crying out, I could feel and taste and smell her, and it was intoxicating. I closed my eyes, pierced my tongue deep inside her and moved my fingers as far as I could. She was so loud my ears hurt. 

And then she screamed. Her whole body trembled, her slit leaked all over the carriage cushions, and she wasn’t letting go of my head. She came with my mouth forced on her, and only when it had finally passed did she finally let her legs relax. They dropped to the floor of the carriage one after the other. Her whole body had fallen to the side. 

I quietly climbed up beside her and pulled her into my arms. 

“Oh…” Her eyes fluttered open. “You’re a quick learner.” 

“I just did what you did,” I mumbled. 

“Oh, not that.” She chuckled, and kissed my cheek. “I haven’t shagged someone in eons. I meant your holding me.” 

“Oh-“ I let her go for a moment in uncertainty, but she curled right back up against my chest regardless. 

“It’s good, Margret. It’s very good. You’ll need excellent bedside manners. It’s just as important as anything else.”

Awkwardly, I brought my arms back around her as I settled in the crook of a cushion. Her slit was still twitching against my thigh, but she seemed sated. I could my own entrance, wet, warm, and oddly satisfied. After so many years ignoring my own feelings, to finally have it brought to a conclusion brough with it endorphins that did things to my head. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to float. “It feels strange to hold each other like this.” 

“It’s supposed to feel good.” She kissed my cheek. “It prolongs the enjoyment.” 

“It just feels like we’re sitting around naked in a carriage while the driver gets off on what he just heard.” 

“Ignore that. Focus on the feeling. The satisfaction of what you just experienced.” I tried to pull away when she moved up to kiss me, but she held my cheek to keep me from getting away. I made a face, but she simply smiled, and drew her finger along my lips. Her juices were still sticky on my tongue. 

“It’s about caring about the other person, more than using them for your own pleasure. Sex is give and take. Not everything about this world has to have a user and a used. That’s what separates us from those that use it for vice.”

“I… I suppose.” 

“Good.” Her eyes glittered. “We’ll rest for now. But I’d like to work on this. Wouldn’t you?” 

“I...” 

“Do you regret this, Margret?” 

I couldn’t look her in the eye. “No…” I muttered. “It felt good. This… Feels good. I just… I don’t know how to explain this. It feels wrong.” 

“Do you feel guilty?” 

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What were you thinking of when you came?” 

“I don’t know!” 

“Was it Quill?” 

“No!”

“Then who?”

“You!” I caught myself right after I said it. Staring at her, shaking faintly, trying to take it back. But it hung in the air.

She grabbed my jaw, looking me in the eye with those chilling blues. “Don’t feel guilty about that, Margret.”

“But I… I like Quill.” 

“You and I both know that.”

I pushed her away. “It’s not as simple as knowing. I still… I did that. And now I can’t even look at myself in the mirror and think the same things anymore. I’m… that. I am capable of that. And I did it when I know that I should have been focusing on the war. On keeping track of you. On keeping people safe. I let my guard down, and I just did something stupid. What if someone had attacked us?”

“Margret, your body is your own.” 

“So?”

“And you choose what you do with it. No one can own it. Not Quill, not the war, not the Queen, not the girl who thought she could steal your first kiss. If you lose yourself and get sucked into a war, sacrifice all that you are, what will you be when everything is over? A martyr? Dead? You can’t give yourself over completely.” She traced a scar that ran down my breastbone. “This is what happens to you when you give yourself to a cause, sweet.” She flicked her eyes up to mine, and smiled. “You are consumed.” 

“I can’t be consumed by pleasure either.” 

“I am not asking you to. I am asking you to learn to live in moderation. Do you even know what that word means?” 

“Of course I do.”

“I’m not sure you do.” She sighed, closed her eyes, and settled down against my chest. “I am tired now. Let’s sleep. We have too much time ahead of us.” 

“But I’m not done talking!”

“I am.”

I sighed, then glanced between us. “We’re still – what if he comes in? The driver?”

“Then he’ll get the show of the lifetime, won’t he?” She giggled. 

“Don’t joke about that!” 

“He won’t, Margret. I paid him to go through the night. We’ll be alright. Just, rest. Have sweet dreams for once. I’ll be here. A friend, if you like.” 

The curve of her spine fit in well against my stomach. The drumming of the wheels underneath us were like a metronome. With the scent of sex and the exhaustion of satisfaction lulling me, I found myself reluctantly nodding along against my better judgement. I wanted my clothes, but they were too far away. 

Perhaps, just this once, I could afford to rest. We did, after all, have all the time in the world.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Muse: The Old Hellos - Soldier, Poet, King: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzVKsltzYdI  
> (give you two guesses who the Solider, Poet and King are)   
> Tom Day - Who We Want to Be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVomQtrtMTM

QUILL 

The path to the scribes was laced with cave ins. It was a wonder that Sylph had been able to navigate it. The treacherous landscape was meant to be impossible when compounded with the natural labyrinth. 

Margret had thought I’d trusted the Duchess noble implicitly. And perhaps I did. Perhaps I believed that she had only good things at heart. But that wouldn’t have stopped me from tailing her whenever I caught her leaving our populated area of the catacombs to do her other job. I may have trusted her, but I wasn’t stupid. And I wasn’t above discovering where exactly the scribes were in the tunnels. 

Sylph never turned her head, nor seemed to notice that she was being watched. The question arose in my mind as to whether she was leading me on purpose, or perhaps trying to throw me off the scent by taking convoluted directions to try to get me lost in a maze. But day after day, she seemed to take the same route without fail. And I had no other leads. 

I expected none of the girls had ever made it even close to this far, and for a good reason. The obstructions had to have been man made. One of the cave ins made me crawl through and nearly lose my torch, but the other side was artificially spotless. 

The tunnel dipped lower, then dropped off into nothingness in front of a door that was too rusted to hold its shape anymore. I pushed it open, and in front of me was the Rabbit Hole. 

I could never get used to the size of the thing. Cracks of light from the top were the only source to provide insight into the sheer size of the cavern. They tapered off the further down one looked, until they dissipated into nothingness. As I peered over the balcony the entrance provided, I couldn’t fathom how deep it went. There was no bottom, just a wide inviting maw that caught any crumbling debris or unsuspecting person. 

I could recall the path that Sylph had taken time and time again with her sack of goods, meticulously plodding along the winding staircase that hugged the hellmouth. She would always nearly disappear in the gloom before turning in a particular tunnel that I had never found connected to anything, outside of this hole. It was that grey one, next to another cave in. I could just see it, if I held up the torch and squinted. 

Holding the light source securely in one hand and touching the crudely hewn wall with another, I made my descent. Stones and chipped wood from ages past crumbled into my hands when I pushed down too hard into the side. They made a sharp noise as they connected with the stone beneath my feet, then jumped down to never been seen again at the bottom of the bottomless hole. I didn’t hear them collide at the bottom. 

Gulping, I continued. One foot in front of the other, leaning against the wall, not too hard as I could feel the earth shifting under my weight. One of the stone steps shifted with it, and for a moment I lost my balance. I cried out, faltered, and there went my torch. 

I watched helplessly as it connected with a lower staircase, then bounced into the ether. The light provided a faint glow to the side of the wall far past what I could see before, but even that subsided before I could get an image of the bottom. I tried to listen for a sound, but there was nothing. The torch itself seemed to slip into the darkness, as though even light couldn’t survive down there.

Squinting in the darkness ahead, I continued the descent with a quickly beating heart. 

The scribes were worth it, I kept telling myself. This was a trip Sylph made every day. I could make it too. Granted, her legs were fully functional. She knew what paths worked, what didn’t. And she had a torch. But I could do this. I needed to do this. We needed their assistance and we needed answers. Margret was right. We couldn’t keep living in darkness and allowing them to put us in a position of need. We were at their mercy. Even if they allowed us to stay here, there was always a question at the tip of our tongues of how long. We needed allies. We needed help. We needed confrontation.

The ground beneath my feet shuddered. This time, I clenched my teeth and waited for it to settle before I moved. But it didn’t. Earth slipped over my toes, and I glanced up to see the beginnings of another cave in coming right for me.

I went running down the winding staircase. Stone after precarious stone, barely touching the side of the wall to remind me how much room I had, the other hand wavering freely into the ether that was kilometers deep. What had been complete and total silence turned into a cacophony of ricocheting debris assaulting my ears. It was like an animal roaring at me, demanding me to stop. 

I didn’t, not until I reached that damned door. Huffing, shaking, with my feet stinging and my whole body screaming in protest, I leaned against the frame and looked back to where the collapse would have knocked me right off the spindly staircase. I could still see boulders as big as my head slowly rolling off to join my torch and who knew what else down below. 

I shivered, then tried the door. 

Locked. Heaving, I looked the heavy wooden thing up and down. How one could have gotten something of such heft down here was beyond me. It was massive, set deep into the wall and covered in dust. There were no signs of life to be found, and no way I could break it down. I tilted my head up, and squinted at the inconspicuous eye level slat in the door. I touched it with a few fingers, then resigned to knocking. 

Moments passed. Minutes. I glanced down to my right into the darkness, considering leaving back the way I’d come. I supposed I had been right from the beginning. Sigil had known I was tailing her, and had sent me on a wild goose chase. 

I took one last look at the door, when I heard the mechanism of something being unlocked. The slat opened. A pair of green eyes looked back at me, squinting into the darkness. 

“Sylph?” The voice was low and grizzled. “Or is this substitute? She said something about a substitute for a couple of weeks. Did you bring the nuts I wanted?” 

“I’m not the substitute. My name is Quill,” I said. “I’ve come to talk about the rebellion. I believe it’s been more than long enough.” 

“Quill…” The eyes narrowed in thought. “You’re early.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Ah well.” The slit closed with such a sudden sharp heft that I nearly fell back into the void. The sound of metal clinked, mechanisms whirred, and then the door was opened. 

In front of me stood a portly Queen noble with hair more grey than red. Spectacles hung from his neck like a pendant. He picked them up with a pudgy hand and nudged them up his noise so he could see me more clearly. 

“It really is you,” he mussed. “I didn’t realize how short you were.”

“How is it that you were expecting me?” 

“That’s a little complicated. Why don’t you come in, have a drink, something to eat?” 

I looked past him to see a cheerily lit lobby, overcrowded with rugs, tapestries and books in rich colors. The scent of fresh bread wafted in from the back like an inviting beckoning hand. 

Slowly, apprehensively, I stepped inside after the gentleman.

“My name’s John, by the way.” The man had held out his hand for me to shake. With the other, he closed the door. It made a clicking sound as the locks went back into place. 

I took his hand with one last apprehensive look at the door. “A pleasure.”

“Oh, I doubt that.” He smiled. “You must not be fond us by now, are you? I can’t blame you. Come, you look a little gaunt. Let’s see about getting you a bread bowl.” He scratched his chest as he walked calmly through the arch of the warmly lit room into the next. I followed silently. 

Right against the entranceway sat a decrepit chair and desk stained with black ink, and across from it a lone shelf stood covered with old bundles of paper and books strewn all sorts of ways, different paperweights of strange and unique shape the only thing holding those collections together. On each side of the square carpeted room, piled high with all kinds of colorful old wall art of scenes long forgotten, two doorways stood like yawning mouths. The one that he led me down, however, went straight ahead, instead of branching off into either of those two passageways. As we passed the threshold, the warmth hit me like a punch to the gut. It was almost overwhelming to be brought in such a cheerily lit kitchen after the chill of the underground tunnels.

This room was a modest affair. A deep-set stone oven was the main feature, with a small fireplace cut into the wall to the left for the purposes of a boiling cauldron. To the right, a set of cupboards over countertops were heaped high with flour and cornmeal to last a man two years at least. Many of the old and dusty cupboard doors were open, manifesting jarred items by dozen. I knew perhaps half of them. The other half looked like they hadn’t been touched in hundreds of years. A pair of eyes floated in a jar of pickling juice. I stopped watching when it looked back at me.

John took a long, large peel hanging on the wall by a length of leather, then pulled out a set of five small loaves with practiced grace from the roaring oven. He let out a soft hiss of focus as he nudged them onto the counter at one of the few open spots left, then stood back to admire his work, holding his tool like a spear. 

“Some of my best work,” he said. “I thought about mixing the flours, you see. They’ve had some good results with rye and the regular wheat, so I wanted to work on nuts next. I figured if I ground them up they wouldn’t interfere with the texture of the soup, but would still offer a good taste that I can’t seem to get from the flour alone. What do you think, walnuts? Almonds?” 

“I think this isn’t why I’m here.” I turned to the man. “Apologies, but I came to speak with you on your position in the rebellion.” 

“Well, do you have anywhere else to be?” He asked. Setting the peel to the side, he took a large spoon and waddled over to where the cauldron was boiling over the fire. He dipped it in, and it came back dark brown and covered in chunks of carrot. He tasted it, smiled wider, and used the spoon to point at me. “You might have things to do, but I do too. And I highly suggest you try this soup. It would put some meat on your bones.” 

“I would suggest you listen to the things I have to say.” My stomach growled, and he grinned. 

“Food first. How about I show you around as you eat? A sign of good faith.” As he wandered back to the bread and used the same spoon to carve out a hole, the glasses fell from his nose and went back into lying around his neck. He swore, but didn’t stop what he was doing. Even half blind, he was meticulous. The bowl he carved, he took back to the cauldron and used the same spoon to scoop out as much of the thick stew as he could fit. When he was finished, he dug the spoon deep inside it, and handed it to me. 

I held the bread bowl awkwardly. It certainly smelled edible, but the brown color of the soup itself left me uncertain. The warm spices made my nose wrinkle. I’d never smelled anything like it. The man kept smiling at me with an encouraging nod of his head, so I took a bite to satiate him. 

“What is this?” I asked him. The meat was balanced perfectly something stronger than pepper, mixed with salt and butter. Other herbs I couldn’t quite ascertain gave it a very strong spice, something that assaulted my senses but were just as quickly sated by the bread itself. It was incredibly warming, tasting just as it smelled. 

“Something from the South,” He said easily. “It’s been boring, using the same herbs we find in Wonderland, so I’ve had Sylph get me all kinds of things from far off lands to experiment with ages ago. She had to be sneaky too, the trade embargo’s been going on for so long that these have become a hot commodity. It’s been difficult to find them. But it’s worth it, don’t you think? Do you like it?”

“It’s amazing,” I muttered around another bite. The man grinned wider as he placed his glasses back on his nose. 

“Well, thank you. It’s not often I hear words like that these days. The other men have gotten used to my cooking. I can’t seem to surprise them anymore.”

“About the other men, I’ll be needing to speak with them too. If at all possible, I’d like to talk with all of you about future steps in the rebellion. This is lovely, but I will not be dissuaded.” 

“That will come in time, boy.” He motioned for me to follow with a hand as he began to wander out of the kitchen and back into the elaborate lobby. “How about I show you around first, while you eat?”

I sighed, and took another spoonful as I reluctantly followed the man. “I suppose.” 

“Good, I never get a chance to do this,” he chuckled. “If you were the substitute, I might have even dragged you in anyways. This place is so dull, you know. Look at this room.” He held out his arms to the lobby. “It looks like a cornucopia of the past art and history, but it becomes meaningless after a couple decades. But look here.” He held up a little figurine, about the size of his palm. The creature almost seemed like a cat, if it weren’t for the neck that was too long to make any logical sense. It wrapped around itself like a corkscrew, and the black eyes glinted back at me like they were alit with fury. The maw was styled open, with rows of fangs as long and thin as quills. 

“This is a one to hundred figure of the Bandersnatch,” The man said as he held it up and took the opportunity to examine it more closely himself. “At least, an artists’ interpretation from the sightings. That was back around six hundred years ago, when the only recorded witness to the Bandersnatch without its invisible camouflage actually survived the encounter. I’m partial to believe the creature is black, rather than grey though. That’s what the fur samples we got were. But, ah well, who am I to disbelieve a witness. I’m just a recorder of information.” Setting the figurine down, he continued rifling through the bookshelves like a squirrel.

“Ah,” he said suddenly, pulling back a few sheets of paper as he did. “And this, this is one of the first speeches the Queen gave after the death of the last of the dragons. We got it directly from one of her stewards. It’s interesting to see an older speech compared to one made in recent memory, some of us like to discuss her regression of rhetoric and alliteration-”

“Can I see that?” I asked. He looked to me, then to the papers, then smiled hesitantly. 

“You’re eating right now, and these papers have already had to be copied many times from the original. I’d rather not have to do it again.”

I frowned. “Let’s make this tour quick. I’m already almost finished this.” 

“I… yes, I suppose you are.” He sighed, turned, and slowly wandered through the righthand doorway. I followed him into the long hallway that was brightly lit with braziers piled high with charcoal. Above us, the smoke drifted upward into tiny tunnels that dotted the ceiling. 

“Where do those holes go?” I asked. 

“One of the higher branching tunnels. All the smoke is diverted so we don’t end up suffocate from smoke inhalation. It floats through specifically crafted hallway and ends up back in the main chamber of the rabbit hole so difficult to see through the din that one can’t tell where the smoke came from in the first place. Many of the tunnels here do the same, not just this one. It’s truly a work of genius architecture that was convenient to find when we needed to move our collection to a more secure, untouched location. It’s as if this place was made to be lived in.” 

“You didn’t build this place?” 

“Oh, no, not these tunnels. The rooms we are in now have been here since the very beginning. Of course, when we found it – or should I say the founders found it, this must have been more than a thousand years ago now – it was a glorified animal hovel. Nothing but earth in piles, gouging claw marks all over the walls, and a little spot for a meagre firepit. The original scribes made it more livable for nobles such as ourselves, and we’ve been slowly adding it ever since with our own collections.” 

“What do you think made it?” I asked. 

He furrowed his brow as he stopped outside a room. “I’m not sure.” 

“What do you mean, you’re not sure? You’re a scribe, aren’t you?” 

“Less a scribe, and more a caretaker. Maybe one of the others will be able to help you.” As he passed each room, he patted the door. “These are the bedrooms, one for each of the men. There’s Alexander, Frederick, August, Henry, Dune, and Robert. Poor Ash died a few years back. He was ninety three, that lovely fellow. Hands couldn’t move for the world in the end, couldn’t even pick up a spoon. Alexander took over when he went. He had the library dusted, all of the archives re-evaluated, cleaned up and copied all of the papers that were falling apart, put us on a proper schedule, and changed the balance of labor. The man had a mission, that’s for sure. I admire him, even if he did say I was more suited for a cook’s job.” He laughed. “He wasn’t wrong, though. Experimenting with bread is infinitely more interesting than copying things.” 

I sighed. “And where is he, this Alexander?”

“In the archives, I believe.” He nodded back the way we’d come. “Down there. I’ll show you.”

We followed the way back, and through the arch we hadn’t yet entered. Immediately the steps down required the both of us to hug the walls until we met a door made of the same heavy wood as before. John opened it with a smile. 

In front of us was a scholar’s paradise. The ceiling was thirty feet high at least. It had to be, to house the shelves of books that rose as high up as they did. Rows extended back hundreds of feet, every one of them filled to the brim with books of all shapes, sizes, and levels of decorum. The only lights came from the two initial braziers, scattered candles, and lanterns hanging on hooks at the front of this nexus of knowledge. They illuminated the desks pushed up against the front of the shelves, most of them occupied by a different dishevelled man pouring over text and jotting down the replacement beside them. The place was littered with memorabilia, carpets covering the dirt floors again and old sculptures of strange creatures filling up the entrance to the point it was congested and difficult to navigate. The shelves were left alone, though, naked and silent. The only sound I could hear was the occasional ruffling of papers and the sniff of a man who seemed to be sick. 

“This is the archive,” John whispered. “All of the Kingdom’s knowledge, from the old stories to recent history, at our fingertips. We even have the censes from the past nine hundred years or so. I can give you names of every individual from the year two hundred and three, if I wanted. It’s that meticulous.” 

“It’s amazing,” I muttered. “I knew there would be a lot, but I didn’t quite expect… This much.”

“The dry cold of the underground does well to store the books in a safe place. Not a drop of water has hit here in a thousand years.” He pressed his glasses back up against his nose. “There are books here that shouldn’t exist, books that explain things in ways you’ve never heard of, books that tell the future, the present, the past, books that – well, blimey,” he pressed a hand to his chest. “I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?” 

One of the men in front of us coughed, and turned around. His nose was running, and he used a stray parchment to wipe it.

“Who’s this, then? The substitute? Did he bring the nuts?” 

I stared at his orange hair. 

“It’s not polite to stare,” John pat my shoulder. I flinched, but he didn’t seem to notice. “This is Quill, August. August, Quill. He’s the leader of that rebellion they got cooking upstairs, you know.” 

“I’m no leader,” I muttered. 

“Well, you certainly don’t look it.” August wiped his mouth. The middle aged man cleared his station with little more than a swipe of his hand, then stretched his thin body in his seat. “You’re a Lord noble after all.” 

“I… I am. But you’re a hybrid.”

“And what’s that to you?” 

“I apologize, I’ve just never seen one before.” 

The other two men turned about on their stools. One had hair too white with age to give away any hybrid status, but his green eyes showed some Queen noble, at least. The middle one though, he was as Queen as they came. Bright red hair in the shape of a rooster’s comb, and a beard that he rubbed as he took a look at me. The man had wrinkles around his eyes that crinkled when he smiled. 

“Quill,” The bearded Queen noble chuckled. “I thought we’d be getting you down here soon, but I didn’t expect it this soon.”

“Sorry, this soon? Forgive me if I didn’t realize I had to brave the tunnels to come beg for your help sooner. I was a bit busy trying to keep my family alive.” I crossed my arms. “I’d like some clarification on exactly what you know.” 

“We mean you no harm, Quill,” The man said quickly. The elder man with green eyes nodded his head along with him, but the hybrid had already turned back to his work with little more than a huff. “My name is Alexander. You know August and John already, and this Henry. The others are sleeping for the moment.” 

“You’re avoiding the question.” I gritted my teeth. “Well, wake them up. I’m tired of waiting.”

“I’m not one to interrupt my comrades and their sleep.” Alexander smiled hesitantly. 

I looked at the remains of the bread and spoon, then threw them down onto the floor. John was quick to go scurrying after them before they could touch the carpet. I didn’t care. “You don’t seem to understand the strain we are in right now. I’ve been dealing with a lack of resources for months, a baby that can’t see the light of day and is suffering for it, one of the girls has died, and I had to send the only other noble I had working with me away. You act like you believe in the things we are doing, you have all this knowledge at your fingertips to realize the truth, and you’re all sitting on your arses just WAITING for me to show up and tell you I need help! Saying that I’m “early”. Why couldn’t you have come to talk to us? Why couldn’t we have just had dialogue? Why must we play this ridiculous game of riddles?” 

Alexander sighed. “It wasn’t the right time, Quill.” 

“Don’t you dare try to keep up this vague act. What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s not as simple as us giving ourselves over to your cause. It’s true that we believe in it. But we are just old men. Middle aged, at best. We can’t be soldiers.” He pushed his papers to the side, and glided up from his seat. Alexander was considerably taller than me. Despite his age of forty five, perhaps fifty, he appeared to be in excellent health. His blouse and fingers stained with ink, he bowed before me like I was some kind of ruler. “I apologize, for our actions.”

“You’re not listening to me,” I muttered. I flew past him to the first row of bookshelves and scanned the titles that poked out from the bindings. Picking up one, I began to leaf through a story that explained the approximate dates of every sighting of the Cheshire cat. “There’s so much opportunity. Imagine what you could do when you prove the discrepancy that the old ways had with the new. Imagine what you could do by proving to people that magic exists, has existed since the beginning, and has only declined due to the Royals’ stagnant influence.” 

Exasperated, Alexander followed me and waved a hand to the others to leave. Henry took his supplies without complaint, John left with a hurt expression cradling the bread in his hands, but August did nothing. He simply watched us. His eyes were a strange mix of gold and green. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. 

“Quill, I understand your frustration,” Alexander said.

“I don’t believe you do.” 

“Perhaps I don’t know exactly. But I’m a scholar. I don’t like not knowing things either.” He followed me as I continued further into the archives with one of the lanterns. Occasionally I’d lift one of the books, turn the pages, and see new things I hadn’t even heard of before. Talking dragons. Sightings of them flying over the mountains, as big as castles, long after they were supposed to have died out. The systematic massacre of the talking animals by the hand of the Queen in her deranged state of superiority and grandeur. The war between Wonderland the South ending in the closing of the borders and the taking of thousands of Southern slaves. The strange world that existed before Alice graced it that was barely more than a collection philosophical ideas. All of it fueled a rage within me. All of this information I’ve never even heard of. Information that could have changed minds. Information that could have made nobles see the change that had ruined their lives under their very noses.

Alexander went to place a hand on my shoulder, and I knocked his hand hard enough to nearly send the lantern flying. He gripped it tight. His eyes widened in the dim light of the flame. 

“Why do you keep things hidden?” I growled. 

“If the people knew, there would be riots. The Queen would easily see where the knowledge came from, and have this entire place burned to the ground. The only reason she hasn’t already is for nostalgia’s sake, and she hasn’t the best memory anymore. We exist because we aren’t a threat to her.” 

“Fine, that’s all well and good that you don’t tell the general public. But why don’t you help us? Why do you let us starve? Why do you pretend we don’t need your help? We do!” 

“It’s complicated.”

“You’re afraid.” I swore under my breath, and turned back to the rows of knowledge before me. 

Alexander’s lantern made my form into a long inhuman shadow. “Things are moving, Quill.” 

“Certainly, without your help.” One of the books was a detailed account of the Duchess in her early years. There were sketches of her I could barely make out in the dark. She was dressed in white furs and embroidery. The epitome of a white Queen. 

“Things have been moving since the day the Duchess was born. Fate is a powerful thing.” 

“Next you’re going to tell me that slavery is somehow my fault, or that we are all connected and thus the reason for this madness. Somehow, we are all to blame, so let’s not poke fingers where they don’t belong, right?” I replaced the book in the shelf. “Fate is pathetic. If we all resigned ourselves to the things that we believe are fated, we would never change.”

“And you would still be stuck with your father?”

I threw the first book I could find at him. He dived after it and caught it in his hands with little time to spare. And yet he still looked at me with pity in his eyes, pretending that I mattered more than the work I’d nearly ruined.

“You don’t get to talk about things you shouldn’t know,” I muttered. 

“It’s not difficult to put two and two together. We spend some time on the surface too. Word gets around. We knew that the Lord’s Right Hand apparent ran away from home with a slave, but everyone’s knowledge dropped off after that. It’s like you stopped existing. But we knew, when you entered our sanctum. Rumors, Quill. They allow people to know a great lot of things they shouldn’t.” 

The man slowly closed the gap between us, the lantern clinking faintly as he raised it up to take a look at one of the higher shelves. His eyes were old, and sad as he spoke. “We’re near the fables section, now.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I growled. “Sylph knew things. You knew things. Everyone knows more than they let on. I’ve let it go because there were always more pressing matters, but this is the final straw. I’m not about to accept that rumors of all things are how you know as much as you do. You all said I was early. What does that mean?” 

He went past me. “The fables section has quite a lot of stories.”

“And now you’re not even listening to me.”

“You may want to follow me, Quill.”

The light was disappearing in the darkness. He turned a corner. I looked back and saw that same pair of yellow-green eyes watching me. August was an uncanny creature. 

I went after Alexander. 

“Fables are more important than many think,” he scratched his beard as he talked. “Some believe that they are more truthful than any historical document. They contain the true feelings behind Wonderland. Exact history can be twisted to benefit someone’s politics, but one can’t hide behind the stories of a fable. You can’t falsify a moral message. They are so well known that some children can recite our stories better than the poor copies we have in these archives. They survive. And no ruler understands how dangerous stories like that can be.”

“And people say that I speak of nothing when I talk.”

“I’m making a point here, Quill. These stories are important. And you are in one of them.” 

In the dim light, Alexander paused at a section, and carefully selected a brown book from countless others. It didn’t seem any different. But he flicked it open slowly, carefully. Flipping from page to page, the lantern waving where he had it hooked temporarily on his hip. 

“John wasn’t lying when he said that these books can tell the future.” He handed the book to me when he found the page he was looking for. 

I read the lines slowly. Then again. And again. And again. 

“I’m not in here,” I growled as I looked to him. “This is just a stupid rhyme about Alice. Something about the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts and the Gryphon. There’s nothing to this.”

“You don’t see it?” 

I scanned the lines with furrowed brows. Alexander held up the lantern for me. 

It told the story of the Gryphon making a deal with the Queen for the death of the King. But it was Alice that solved their problems for them. When she returned to Wonderland for the final time, caught in the grips of the Mad Hatter in a trap of sweet bread and honey, they along with a pair of sapphire and jade bracelets, decided to throw a tea party. People from all across the kingdom bowed, and danced, and they gorged themselves on tarts and pepper soup. When the time came for their guest honor, the King, to open his presents, Alice gave the Queen a knife, and the Queen gave it to the King. The ending was missing, though. It led up to a party, the Kinging and Queening of everything in sight out of sheer joy, the giving of the present, the knife with which to open it, and then a drop off into nothingness. All of it was told in the same lilting poetic verse that many of the fables were. Full of nonsense and madness. 

“There’s nothing here,” I muttered. 

“Perhaps, to the untrained eye, there might not be. But there are other copies.” He handed me another book, but paused my hand when I went to open it. “Some more fleshed out than others. All with the same beats to the story, but enough changes that one begins to question why it is that certain things stay as they are. A man of words, a leader, the Mad Hatter, precious things blue and green, and Alice. All working together, towards the a goal of the deal of a ruler. Sometimes they have names. Sometimes they have faces. This one is the most sophisticated. It was first written a thousand years ago.” He bit his lip. “Are you prepared?” 

I narrowed my eyes. “I am tired of lies. I’d like to see this for myself.”

He let me turn the pages, and I read silently in the dimly lit corridor. My eyes scanned the words, the carefully penned stories that worked in perfect rhyme. I looked at the images beside them that danced in my head. I turned page after page, reading more and more, and listened to the sound of my own heartbeat as it began to pound faster and faster. My hands shakily turned to the next page to read, only to lose the grip I had on it and rip it. I couldn’t help it. Seeing the image of a Lord noble, warm skinned, freckled, staring back at himself in the real world, it was too much to bear.

On the corner of the page, was the caption. No name. He was simply, “The Scribe.” 

Alexander caught me as my legs gave out. I’d have pushed him away, but I didn’t have the resolve. I didn’t have anything, anymore. 

“All of this…” I muttered. 

“Prophecies have always existed in Wonderland.” Alexander led me down to the floor, then sat himself down beside me. He placed the lantern between us. “In the old world, madness was playful. Alice never much appreciated it, but it was the way we worked. We lived and breathed the vapid, meaningless choices that any sane person would have questioned. And it made us who we were. Magic, wonder, they were intertwined with that logic-less land. And they made stories they believed were just as mad as they were. Who would have thought, so many centuries later, just how pertinent they were?” 

“A thousand years is impossible,” I muttered. I held the book tight against my chest, but I was afraid to open it. “This is all impossible. It can’t exist.”

“Many things can’t exist. And yet they do.” 

“You knew everything, from the moment it started. The moment you heard about me. You knew it would be me.” 

“No, I didn’t. I knew it would be Margret.” 

“What?”

“She visited the Rabbit Hole, once. When she was mad.” Alexander leaned his head back against the shelf. “She saw the petrified garden underneath. And I met her there.” He poked the book in my hands. “You saw her depiction, right? A beautiful creature. Eagle eyed, strong. A leader. The Queen of Hearts.” 

“But she isn’t.” 

“She will. You know she will. You told her what you wanted from her.”

“How do you know that?” 

“It’s the sort of thing you would do, Quill.” He smiled at me, and the wrinkles around his eyes caught the fiery light of the lantern. “You’re the one that comes up with the ideas. The scribe. The man of logic.” He paused and went quiet. “And perhaps, one day, the Lord himself.” 

I froze. “No.” 

“Then, perhaps not. But the pages don’t lie.” 

“The pages…” I stared at the book with shaking hands. “The pages are magic. Prophetic, even. But they’re just words on a page. They don’t control me. And if there is one thing I will never do, it will be Lord. That is one thing this book must have gotten wrong.” 

“I won’t tell you what will and will not happen,” he admitted after a moment of thought. “Regardless, the wheels have been primed to turn for eons. They have finally been oiled, and now they are moving at a rapid pace. We have been waiting for you, to tell you this. To tell you a great many things, in fact. You’ll need them, if you are to have any chance of defeating the ruler.” 

I gripped the book tighter. My mind spun. There were too many doors this opened and closed at the same time. I was lost. All of my work and effort, everything I was trying to do, and it was all orchestrated by some dolt that had written about me a thousand years ago. I had no free will. 

“I don’t like having to work within the bounds of madness and prophecy,” I muttered. 

“I understand that.” 

“There are people that rely on me. I need to keep them safe. The madness of Wonderland is notoriously unsafe. If I were to follow it, it’s possible its story could lead to my death. The ending isn’t written.” 

“Agreed.”

“But… I can’t avoid it, can I. If I’ve done what it’s wanted this far, there’s not much stopping it.”

“No, you cannot.” 

I sighed, and slowly stood up. “But I know what it says now. I know what it wants me to do. And with this, I’ll know how to use it to my advantage. It has battles in here. Strategies I haven’t used, that I will now. People I haven’t met yet. Perhaps I can use foresight to save who I can.” 

“Perhaps,” the man muttered, though he was clearly unconvinced. “If you’d like, you could keep that book. We have many other copies, of varying types.”

I held it under my arm. My hands trembled when I touched it. I could still remember the image of myself, staring back at me, with eyes I didn’t recognize. The image of Margret, with scars she didn’t have yet. Of an older Asentual, with a grin like a cat’s. Of people I hadn’t met yet. Watching. Waiting for me to be there for them. 

I let out a soft breath. “Thank you,” I said. “But I’ll be expecting your help, from now on.” 

“How?” He furrowed his eyebrows. “There is only so much we can do. We can offer our libraries for you, but we’re still not fighters.” 

“You can use your connections to find us nobles that can keep my family alive, if you feel your larders can not sustain us with only one or two runners delivering your precious nuts.” I glared the man down. Despite his size, despite age, and despite the fact that I could barely stand on two legs, I made it count. “I am not letting that baby die. I am not letting another girl die. And you will make sure of this, Alexander. Even if you have to give up John there to feed them.”

Alexander played with the buckles of his vest, but his eyes were soft. He actually smiled at me as he bowed his head. “I’ll do everything I can,” he said. 

“You’ll do what I say.” I said the words like an echo. It couldn’t have been that easy. He couldn’t have just agreed. 

“I’ll do what you say. All I ask if that you don’t use us directly.” He rose up to his full height and looked up at the shelves around us. “These are all the memory that Wonderland has. If we lose this, we’ll only have what the Royals say as truth. We’ll be mind without memory. Nothing can function like that.”

“You don’t have to fight. Just help us. Feed us. That’s all I ask. Supplies are more important than anything. If you want these prophecies to come to fruition so badly, then stop sitting on your arse and help make them yourself.”

“I’ll talk to anyone I can. We’ll keep that baby safe, Quill. But we’ll need to keep you safe, too. You are a valuable asset.” 

“No more valuable than anyone else,” I muttered. 

“You can’t honestly believe that anymore, can you?” 

“Perhaps not. Perhaps I am as valuable as what I can accomplish for others. But no more than that.”

Alexander was still smiling when I walked back to the beginning of the archives. But as I reached the desks, I lay a hand on a statue of a caterpillar with knotted eyebrows, then turned back to the scribe with a gnawing curiosity. 

“Who wrote those stories, in the beginning?” I shook my head just as I said it. “Never mind. No one ever knows. They’re all like that, aren’t they? Just fables with no author.”

“The Duchess,” he said.

“Pardon?” 

“The Duchess. When she was young and so was the world, she wrote the first stories. And later expanded upon them. This story, it was hers. She dreamt of you. Of Margret. Of one boy in particular most of all. That Duchess noble, the sapphire, we have a few transcripts of how she felt when she first wrote about him. Sometimes I look back, and I wonder if she still feels that same sense wonder about the descendant she’ll one day have. I, well, I don’t know his name, but if he’s in the story, I’m sure you’ll see him one day.”

“The Duchess knew?”

“Yes, Quill.” Alexander smiled. “The Duchess always knows. She always has.”

I stared down at the book, and gulped.

“I suppose I should have talked to Margret about this before she left.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MUSE: Madoka Magica - Decretum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcgEHrwdSO4  
> Beth Crowley - Empire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8CZO3xA8jU

MARGRET 

The palace sat on the edge of the world. 

Well, perhaps not the edge of the world, but that was a steep drop. I could almost make out the cave system the kingdom’s wealth came from. However, in the way of such a sight was the castle itself. I was used to palaces covered in flags, crenelations and massive displays of wealth. This one had nothing. Cold and white, with snow covering the coned roofs and every parapet, and with no towns around to speak of, there was no reason to show off. The palace simply was. 

It gave me something to think of other than that my family home had been burned to the ground. 

I hadn’t expected it, that was the worst part. I knew that the Queen hadn’t wanted us to ever return here. I knew she thought the cottage was an eyesore on the field, and she wanted the evidence of treachery gone. But I didn’t realize how far she’d go. 

When I had the driver stop because I knew we were close, when I poured out of the carriage to see, and when I’d seen the ash and charcoal that was left, that’s when I knew. That’s when I broke down, and found myself in the center of the remains, fingernails digging into my hands as Sylph tried to pull them off. After all these years, I still remembered it as the same home, the place where mother had farmed and father had darned all the holes in my dresses. Sylph kept tugging, and I just wanted to take root here. I wanted to lie down, and become the same dust in the wind as this cottage. I wanted to stop existing. I wanted to go back in time, and to have died there, with the axe in my hand and Rettah’s blood and tears already been and gone. 

I didn’t want to cry in front of her. She wasn’t worth it. And yet I did. And yet she dried my tears, smiled, kept my fingers from digging into my own flesh, and let me take as long as I needed. That smile. It was Sigil all over again. Holding me, making me feel like the world could be alright again when everything was crashing around my shoulders. It was all a farce. Everything she did was a lie. 

We went back to the carriage in silence, and continued the route in each other’s arms. It was warm there. 

Every time she had me, every time I did as she pleased, I ended up more confused than ever. My mind was a haze of questions. I could sometimes hear the call of my father from a distance, like the carriage was leaving without him. Her hands often found mine and held them tight. Her head would stay pressed into the side of my neck, where she would sleep for hours. Not even the bump of the wheels on stone would wake her. I’d be left to my thoughts, then, and that was a dangerous place. 

And so the sight of the palace was welcome. The sight of it was mesmerizing. And the chill was like nothing I’d ever felt before. 

“Cloak?” Sylph asked me as she hopped down onto the snow beside me. She held out the woolen blanket she’d gotten from the inside of the carriage, her dark blue one was wrapped tightly around her shoulders. I wondered if the guards in front of us knew how little she wore underneath, or how easy it was to slip off of her. 

“Thanks,” I muttered. I took it quickly and pulled it close. Perhaps I didn’t feel the bitter cold as much as others, but the chill could kill me just the same. 

All it took was a simple nod from the female Duchess noble to have the two men in uniform step away. I could see them shivering in their heavy leather armor as we passed. 

Under my feet was a sensation I’d never felt before. Snow. It crunched with every step. I breathed, and my breath became a little cloud. I breathed harder in wonder. It was as though it were smoke. I cupped my hands, and the breath was even stronger than before. It billowed out. I was a chimney. 

“Are you finished?” I blinked, and turned to Sylph. She was standing a few feet away from me in the courtyard. 

“Sorry.” I straightened, and followed her. 

The courtyard was a winter paradise. Coniferous trees kept the heaviest of the snowfall off the benches and the walkways that Duchess nobles used to navigate. Shrubs, hedges and flora I’d never seen before were as green as could be despite the cold. Scarlet flowers in the middle of bloom, and holly dotting the walkways with red berries. Small cedars planted in patterns going off in all directions as markers of the paths that people could take. Little yellow buds fanned out under the pines, hugging the trunks for safety from the snow. 

Wearing their heavy coats and cloaks and woolen mittens, the blue haired nobility were more numerous than I’d ever seen before. Shades of every kind, eyes ranging from the most chilling off white to a blue as dark as the bottom of an ocean, walking as though the chill were nothing. They all had the same porcelain skin as the girl in front of me. And all of them had that same mysterious chill, speaking in hushed whispers as though every one of them had a secret that others need not hear. There were a few that smiled, a handful that giggled to themselves as they caught stray snowflakes in the air, but the majority were stone faced and careful. I felt as though every pair of eyes were on me as I met up with Sylph. She took my arm in hers, and the two of us continued. 

“Why are they watching?” I muttered. 

“You’re probably the first female Queen noble they’ve seen in a while.” She smiled. “They’re not used to anything other than their own kind. And someone from the summer kingdom coming to the winter one willingly? As a guest? Why, that’s unheard of.” 

“So they don’t know about me.” I sighed.

“No, I would say it’s the hair.” She drew a lock away from my face. “And you are very beautiful. Queen nobles are certainly known for their bold nature. But a Queen noble of such outward grace is a gem.” 

I flushed. “Can you stop that for when we meet the Duchess please? Or in public? In general?” 

“Why would I wish to do such a thing?”

“I won’t be able to say my piece to the Royal if you keep tripping me up.” 

“Consider it a handicap. You are already so well spoken as it is, I fear you may find a way to convince my Duchess out of house and home.” She smiled, and I turned away. 

I furrowed my eyebrows in thought. “Speaking of which, do you have any pointers on how to deal with her?” 

“Whatever do you mean?” 

“Is there anything I should be worried about? What should I avoid? How should I hold myself? If I am to be able to get her on our side, I need to know what she likes.” I bit my lip when she continued to stare. “Is there anything I should know that I could use to my advantage? If she’d refer a curtsey, or perhaps a bow? How does she like to be addressed?”

I stopped when I could tell she was about to erupt into a giggling fit. 

When the laughter had finally subsided, she rubbed my arm and leaned her cheek against my shoulder. “Be yourself. It will be more than enough.” 

“I can’t just be myself! She’s a Royal! I need to be perfect for Quill’s sake and I don’t even know what to expect. All I know about Duchess nobles is you, and…” I waved my hand in the vague direction of the other nobles. “These people. And they seem just as secretive as you are.” 

“Margret, they are intrigued by you. You don’t need to do anything to capture their attention. All you’ll have to do to deal with the Duchess, is to come as you are. That is all that is required of you. She will love you, I promise.”

“I don’t believe in your promises. You enjoy my faults.”

“Let’s make a deal, then.”

“What sort of deal?” I glared at her. 

“If she agrees to everything, then you’ll let us stay here for a day, and I get to enjoy you all to myself in my room. If you fail, then I will go to Quill myself, and tell him I am the reason we failed.”

I huffed. “I would prefer if failure weren’t an option at all.”

“And I am telling you it won’t be. Now stop tripping up over your own feet, and let’s go.” She tugged me faster towards the massive doors of the castle. 

“I can’t help it with the snow!” I nearly fell into her as she pulled me tighter and walked even faster. “Why are you trying to move so fast?”

“I’m home, Margret. I haven’t been home in ages. Wouldn’t you like to see it? Feel the snow under your feet, isn’t it wonderful?” She made us rush through the courtyard like idiots, kicking her shoes up until the drifts of snow turned to white powder under her heel. 

As the two of us rushed towards the doors, she was giggling to herself. I hadn’t heard her giggle before. 

We still weren’t fast enough for her. She made us go quicker and quicker, until the two of us were running right at the poor guards in front of us that looked as confused as I felt. I guess I couldn’t help. Her joy was easy to catch. I found myself holding back laughter when we stopped right outside the door, gasping and shaking off snow. 

The guards stared at us questioningly. 

“We’re here… To see the Duchess,” I panted. 

“Yes please,” Sylph added helpfully. “The Duchess. She’s in right now, right?”

“She’s been expecting you,” the guard slowly inclined his head. “We just didn’t expect such an entrance.” 

I blinked as I stood up straighter. All the laughter fell away. “Expecting us?”

“It’s been too long,” Sylph said before the guard could reply. “I missed the snow. It’s too hot in the Capital.”

“Missing the snow? I can’t imagine.” The guard smiled. “I’d love to be able to go on holiday in the Capital.

“Wait,” I tried to tug her back. “What did he mean by expecting us?”

“We shouldn’t have the Duchess waiting for us, Margret.” Sylph squeezed my arm. “She’s as patient as an oak, but she still expects everything to happen on time.”

“On time? But we didn’t send anything. She shouldn’t know we’re even here. Did something get leaked? Did you send someone?” I bit my lip as I looked from her to the guard nervously. They didn’t seem particularly concerned. 

“Perhaps you should ask her these questions yourself, Queen noble,” said the girl. “The Duchess is known to answer.” 

The guards opened the massive doors to the throne room with their spears at their sides. I gripped Sylph’s hand tightly as my heart began to pound. I’d been going over the speech in my head for an hour before we even arrived, and now I was drawing a blank. She knew. How did she know? 

“I can’t remember my lines, Sylph,” I whimpered. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“You’ll do fine.”

“I can’t deal with Royals. What if she’s like the Queen?”

“I have never in my life met someone so opposite to the Queen.” 

“Yes, but…”

With the doors wide open, I had no choice but to step inside. 

In front of us, stood a throne room as large and as glorious as the maw of the Queen’s. Blue and silver tapestries hung from every wall. No less than eight fireplaces stood on either side of the massive hall, with their fires roaring to get rid of the faint chill in the air. Before us, an ornate blue rug laid itself out towards the plush velvet throne. A silversmith had rendered every nook and cranny of the piece into a work of exquisite art, every tendril turning into snowflakes and artistic renditions of the wind. 

It was empty. 

Instead, the Duchess sat on a simple wooden stool in front of a table in the center of the throne room. The white tablecloth had been hastily thrown on for the platters of sandwiches, pastries and the large silver teapot steaming in the center. Across from her, was a boy. In his early teens, the Duchess noble greedily ate the blueberry tarts that he had gleaned from the tiered platter in front of him. His hair was as ruffled as a sheep, with a sweet, childish face. 

Despite the oddity of the situation, I still couldn’t take my eyes off the royal.

I’d never seen anything like her. With eyes of cobalt, and rivulets of azure locks that flowed down her back, she was more saturated than anything around her. Her dress of sapphires and topaz under a cerulean silk lace paled in comparison to the sheer blueness of her self. Her face was pale, and still as glass. Her smile in the boy’s direction was little more than a ripple. She held herself high, her hands crossed in her lap. She was like a pond, utterly undisturbed. A timeless creature, with a face that could have been twenty or two hundred. There was simply no putting a number on something that wasn’t human. 

She tuned my way, and the air left my lungs. Our eyes met. I choked on my own tongue. In a moment, I felt like she saw everything, and not just my eyes. 

“Your majesty,” I bowed, and then immediately regretted it. A curtsey would have been better. 

“Margret, of the Court of Hearts.” I froze, then turned my head up to meet her gaze again. It was overpowering. 

“You know my name.”

“Of course I do.” She slowly raised a hand, then gestured to the empty chairs beside her. “Please, join us. Benji and I have just started our afternoon tea.” 

The boy gawked at us. 

“Yes, your majesty,” I said as confidently as I could. Slipping into one of the seats, Sylph did the same on the other side.

“Who are you?” The boy asked us around a mouthful of pasty. His voice was clipped. “This was supposed to be OUR tea party. You’re interrupting us.”

Sylph smiled politely. I looked to the boy with a raised eyebrow. “I apologize for our interruption. I was told the Duchess was waiting for us,” I said as carefully as I could. There was always the chance that he was a direct son of the royal herself. That didn’t happen often these days with so many nobles having children and royals not often considering anyone worthy, but with the way she was treating him… 

“Benji, these are friends,” The Duchess said. Her voice alone made me freeze. I whipped my head back to her and hung on her every word. “I asked that they arrive here. We have to treat them nicely.”

“I don’t like them.” Benji frowned and dunked his pastry into the already crumb-filled teacup. “This was supposed to be our time. The Queen noble looks ugly. I hate Queen nobles.” He glanced at Sylph. “I guess you’re okay.” 

“Excuse me?” I said.

“You heard me.” Benji looked up from his food to smirk at me. He wiped his mouth clean, then sat up straight with crossed legs to mimic the royal across from him. “Queen nobles are so annoying. I’d wager you wouldn’t even be able to survive the winter here.”

“I’m doing just fine here.”

“You look just as bad as all the other traders,” Benji rolled his eyes. “They all come in covered in furs and leathers. Unable to survive in conditions that you should be used to with travel.” He raked his eyes over me. “What are you, then? A girl can’t be a slaver. They don’t even have cocks.”

“I am NOT a slaver,” I growled.

“Of course not. I just said you couldn’t be. You don’t have a cock. Don’t you know how to listen with that thick skull of yours? I bet you’re just looking for a way to get money out of her Majesty, aren’t you? You see the Duchess and believe that her gemstones are for sale for cheap. How rude. She is a royal. You should take your flat arse, and leave.” 

“I’m not-” 

He lobbed a pastry. It landed square on my chest, then bounced onto the floor. He snickered at the stain he’d made on my blouse. 

I couldn’t believe that this child could make me see red. But here I was, struggling not to strangle him. 

“Benji is one of my closest confidantes,” The Duchess interrupted us. I turned back jittering in rage, but the Royal had a faint smile on her face. My eye twitched. “He is next in line for Right Hand.”

“Perhaps he’ll need to learn better manners before he can take that position,” I said through gritted teeth. 

“Perhaps.” The Duchess sipped at her teacup. “But he does learn all his manners from me.”

The air left my lungs. Benji snickered. 

“I am sure you are doing your best, your majesty,” Sylph said, with a sip of tea.

“I didn’t mean anything by that!” I said quickly, but the boy had already burst into laughter. 

“You should see the look on your face,” he grinned. “You look like her Majesty just ordered your execution. I’d like to see something like that. I bet you choke and bitch even when you’re being strangled.”

I turned on him with fire in my eyes. My blood boiled and all I could see was a redhead with yellow eyes. “Listen here, you little shite.”

“What did you just call me?”

“If you’re asking for my death, then you’re asking for a fight, now aren’t you?” 

“I believe you are the guest that can not seem to behave herself. I have done nothing. You are telling a child you want to fight them? What are you, a bully?” The boy smirked at me. 

I gaped at him. “You’re… You’re the one doing EVERYTHING here! I’m just trying to be polite and you THREW something at me! Why are you such a vagrant?” 

I was gasping in frustration with fingers that twitched into hands under the table. Sylph looked at me, I glared at her, and then we both looked at the Duchess. And still, the Royal drank her tea, quiet as ever. 

But Benji was smirking. With the widest, shit eating grin I’d ever seen. And no one was doing a thing. No one was bothering to react. None of the guards so much as twitched in their positions. It was like this exchange had never existed. 

“You’re a little bitch,” he chuckled.

“And you’re a prick.”

“Whore.” He was gearing up to throw something again.

“Bastard,” I growled.

“Twat.”

“Dick.”

“Cunt.” 

“Smear on the inside of your mother’s thigh.” 

I caught the tart he threw, but I still got custard all over my hands. I tried to wipe it off with one of the embroidered napkins by my place setting. My mouth curled into a disgusted frown.

“You’re a cunt!” He snarled. “A great big cunt! You take that back!”

“Benji, perhaps you should visit your sister,” The Duchess said. Despite the quiet tone, the young male noble heard her immediately. He froze, then slowly leaned back in his seat with all the fire in his eyes gone out.

“But, we were going to have tea,” he whined. “This was supposed to be our time.”

“We can have tea another time.”

“I don’t want tea another time, you promised me tea now!”

“I know I did. But the tea was really for these two. That’s why I didn’t put out the best pastries. I’m saving those for you.” She smiled serenely. 

He brightened like a child. The immaturity of this little bastard. He was like a toddler as he got off his chair and went to hug the Royal. Still, I couldn’t help but stare at how her smile appeared so warm. She hugged him like a mother might, ruffling his hair for good measure and placing a kiss on his forehead. They held each other as long as he wanted. She never let go. He was the first to do so. And when he left, she watched him until he disappeared down the corridor behind the throne. 

When she turned back to greet us, she was still smiling. And I wasn’t. I was staring down at my cup of tea. 

“So,” she said calmly. “I suppose you have questions.”

“I don’t have any,” Sylph intoned. On her plate she had already taken most of the cucumber sandwiches. Half of her tea was cream, with at least five lumps of sugar. 

“I do, your Majesty.” Tentatively, I took the cup of tea and sipped it, then quickly put it back down. My hands were still shaking. If a child could leave me like this, then I still had a lot of work to do.

“Go ahead, then.”

“I’m here to ask for your help.” I tried to recall anything that I could of the speech I’d meant to give. I was still drawing a blank, and that stupid boy hadn’t helped. “We’re – me and another noble I mean, and a lot of humans – wait. I meant to say, ah – how do you feel about slavery?” 

I suppose this all ended before it ever began. It was a mistake coming here. 

“It is an unfortunate reality.”

“What?” I stared at her as she poured herself another cup of tea. 

“Slavery is an unfortunate reality. And you are here to end it, correct?”

“I… yes.” My stomach churned. “And who told you?”

“No one.”

“But – we kept everything a secret, we’ve been moving as carefully as we could. How could you know?”

The Duchess held the cup of tea in her hands and closed her eyes. “Forgive me for speaking around the point Margret, but Wonderland is broken. And it has been for a very long time. The reason I know things that my siblings don’t is because they do not function as Royals should any longer.”

“What?” I stared at her, completely fixated, unable to turn my head even a fraction of an inch.

“Madness has affected my sister. And my brothers. The world is dying because of it. Something has laid claim to Wonderland, infecting us all. And no matter what they have tried to do, they can not seem to get rid of it. They’ve lived too long. And now they pay for it with the loss of their minds. I remain untainted by that level of decay. And that is what allows my precognition to remain infallible. I can see you, and I can see Quill, and I have seen you both for a very long time.” 

I couldn’t breathe. She just kept talking, but I couldn’t begin to understand. 

“But… But you haven’t done anything about it.” I struggled for words. “You could see everything, and you never did anything about it.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then aren’t you part of the problem?”

“Perhaps. But at the edge of the world with nothing else in sight, I work with what materials I have.” She smiled at my worsening glare. “I am aware that the buying and selling and forced work of humanity is wrong. I do what I can to alleviate this. But it does not matter. They have no choice in the matter. What good is money, or goods, or a better work schedule, when they are still chained? The mines are still one of the most dangerous places in Wonderland to work. But what else am I to do?” 

“Get nobles to do it?”

“What kind of paradigm shift would that require, I wonder? But then there is the matter of my lack of action against my siblings.”

“And why is that?” 

“I have pulled away from their world. We hold Hand meetings, I let my court choose to leave if it wants, and we accept only enough trade to survive. The isolation helps keep the evils of madness from reaching our doors like a cancer. But this accomplishes nothing else. It only serves to further isolate us from understanding the problem. Perhaps this lack of action keeps us safe, for a time. But this is what cowards do, I can hear it in your eyes.” 

“Well, am I wrong?”

“I am a coward. You are correct.”

“If you know you are, then why not do something? Something real? Make a damned statement for once? You just told me you could see the future, and you’ve done quite literally nothing with it.”

“My realm may be cold enough to keep intruders out, but one can not eat gems. One can not send them off to battle. The King would kill us all with his army alone if he suspected me of treachery against his siblings. And if the Lord knew how I felt about the matter – well, perhaps he would not care, but his Hand could easily cut off grain supply. The moment I no longer fall in line with their actions – no, the moment they know that I am aware of what their madness had done to them, our kingdom would be finished. They would be straining against their leads to look for new territory. If they could expand upon such riches to fuel their habits and trade with those from beyond the seas, it would accelerate the damage that is already accruing year by year.” She looked down at her cup of tea. “Gone are the days that they ever cared about balance. I am uncertain if they even remember the reason behind us being four, instead of two. I may know things, but that is all.”

I bit my lip. “I get… I get what you’re trying to say. But you’re just letting the rest of the world suffer. You’re not even trying to quietly do your part. You’re just wasting away at the edge of the world. There has to have been something you could have done. With that level of knowledge – you knew how much worse it would get, you know who would die, you must have known something you could have prevented!”

“I am keeping my realm safe for the time that we will be able to act.”

I growled. “Time? What the hell does that mean? When is it okay for you to finally do something about Wonderland dying?”

“When the time is right.”

“The time IS right! That’s why I am here! I am here to ask for your help, and I need you to at least say something!” 

“It is too early, dear Margret.” She let out a soft breath. “I must be on time, and not a minute before.” 

The teacup broke in my hands. I slammed to my feet, seeing red, and unable to think. 

“You’re a sham of an oracle, now aren’t you?”

“Margret,” Sylph tried to say, but I cut her off in a snarl.

“No, she is! She’s a bitch, a bloody cunt letting women and children die because of the “time”. What time? What are we waiting for? What is there left to do? Get an army? Talk to your slaves you pay so handsomely! Need allies? Talk to the South! Those in the Capital just wasting away, thinking all hope is lost! You could ignite that hope! You could do something, if only you bothered to lift a manicured finger! Why not get off your arse and actually leave the palace?” 

“Margret that’s enough-”

“Shut up, Sylph. You don’t need us, your “Majesty”. You don’t need me, you don’t need Quill, you don’t need to wait for some stupid event to start acting. With precognition like that, why didn’t you know that any of this would happen? Why didn’t you stop it before it got to this point? Why did you let people suffer? Why aren’t you bothering to do anything about these citizens you pretend to care about? You’re just as bad as the Queen!” 

“I need to wait, Margret. You are too early, and that is the end of it.” 

I glared at the women dressed in blue. “What is there we need to wait for?” 

“Alice.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

The Duchess sighed softly. “Margret, with the world so broken, something is needed to get rid of the stagnation and filth. That is a new voice. Something entirely otherworldly, and different. And that is a new Alice.”

“Alice was a character in a story.” 

“She was as real as you or I.”

“No…” I faltered. “No, she wasn’t.”

“And why do you believe that?”

“My parents always said it was a story. A nice story, but it was just that. A story.”

“A fable will always have at least some roots in reality. And Alice was real. She was always real. Without her, the world would not exist as it does. And in order to bring us back to who we are, we will need another Alice to save us.” She smiled softly. “I have been waiting for you for hundreds of years, Margret. I have known about your life from the beginning. And there are so many waiting in the wings for the story to unfold. But you are early. It is as though you are too impatient for the world to rectify itself.”

“It… It won’t fix itself. Not if you think like that. Whatever this prophecy you have, this Alice thing, I don’t get any of it. I’m not smart. I’m not special. And I’m not good at trying to understand how to read between the lines on pieces of poetry you slap together and call intelligent. I’m just a fighter. And there are people dying right now. Because you don’t do anything. Because you believe in a story, and you think that something is going to happen is you sit and wait here long enough. I’m not going to sit here and wait for you to decide when we’re supposed to act.” 

“You are already acting. That is why you sit here before me.”

I frowned. “Well, maybe we don’t need you.”

“But you do.”

“I don’t.”

“The story says that you do.”

“Well, I don’t want it.”

The Duchess raised an eyebrow. I glared at her. The red was returning again, slowly but surely. 

“Maybe you’re not the Queen,” I said. “Or any other Royal. Maybe you’re the best of them. But you’re still one of them. And with an age as long as yours, you’re just as easily susceptible to stupid old ideas. You still just sat here while the world went to the dogs, waiting for me to show up and solve your problems. And now you’re saying I have to keep waiting.” I stared her perfect porcelain face down. She hadn’t even twitched. “What am I to you? A pawn? Are you deciding when is the best time to play me? I’m not a toy for you to use whenever you like. I’ve lived long enough in this madness you talk about to know what it is you keep cautioning us against. Yes, it’s bad. Yes, it’s evil. And it’s something we’ll all eventually be eaten by. So we should be fighting. You can’t just pretend it’s going to wait for you. You can’t just tell me to do what you want. I have sapience. I have free will.”

“Free will is nothing to prophecy.” 

“Prophecy is full of shite. Fuck your prophecy.” 

She went quiet. Sylph rose to her feet. 

“Margret. Perhaps we should discuss things in the other room.”

“Perhaps we should get the hell out of here. I am done with Royals.”

“Give us a moment, your Majesty,” the girl bowed to the Duchess. But the creature smiled calmly, held up her tea cup, and inclined her head in a faint nod. 

“All is well, Sylph. Do what is needed. I will be here.” 

…..

I burst through the door to the Duchess noble’s room without grace. I didn’t want to talk to her. She kept talking to me, but I didn’t pay any attention. I saw red. About the Duchess, about the damned child, about the futility of coming here in the first place. We were stuck, waiting for a stupid Royal to deign us with her blessing of resources that she wouldn’t give because of an arbitrary time she had come up with. 

I couldn’t go back to Quill with this. 

“Margret.” Sylph tried to approach me, but I growled at her from under the blankets of her bed. 

“Fuck off. Leave me alone.”

“This is my room.”

“Find another. There are plenty. This place is as empty as it is cold.” 

“Margret, perhaps we should discuss things before we go back to the Duchess.”

“Fuck going back to the Duchess. Why would I want to do something like that? She humiliated me. From the very beginning.” 

“She didn’t mean that, I’m certain.” 

“Of course she did.” I poked my head out from under the blankets to glare steely eyed at the girl. She looked like a fairy in her natural habitat. I couldn’t help but watch her thin shoulders relax in that lace dress. She knew. I bet she knew. She had that knowing look on her face. That mischief. I wanted to scratch it off. “First, she knew we were coming from the start. Then, she has it all set up with her little fuck of a protégé beside her just to annoy the hell out of me. And then she takes forever to explain that she’s not going to help us.”

“She didn’t say she wouldn’t help us. She said we were early.” 

“I don’t care to know what “early” means. You know what early means to me? It means people are going to keep dying because of an imaginary time limit.” 

“It’s not arbitrary. Alice is coming.” 

“You and her both have drunk something poisonous.” 

“Margret.” She sat down on the side of the bed. I scuttled away from her. 

“Don’t.” 

She put her hand on the bump where my head was. “Were you embarrassed?” 

“Don’t patronize me.”

“What would you have preferred?”

“Not any of that.” I glared at the wall. The red was fading with the stroking of her hand. “I wanted her to say that she would help. That she would send soldiers. At the very least, food. I can’t go back to Quill with empty pockets. I’d be useless… This whole thing was useless.” Slowly, my shoulders relaxed. She kept stroking. 

“You are not finished. I’m certain the Duchess will speak to us again.” 

“I don’t want to talk to her again. Especially not around that little bastard.” 

Sylph chuckled faintly. “You still have some custard on you.” 

I growled.

“Margret, I’m not sure what kind of court it was that you had in the Queen’s palace, but the Duchess is not here to test you. She is not here to make you feel as though you are lesser. The Duchess is like me.” 

“I don’t like you, either.” 

She sighed. “I know you feel as though there are secrets with the Duchess. And with me. But I promise you, there aren’t. She told you, clearly, what she is capable of and what she is waiting for.” 

“And that was a load of arse. There is no Alice.” 

“There is.” 

“How are you so sure?”

“The Duchess, and the secrets of Wonderland are closely connected. She still remembers the scribes. Which is why she sends protectors and servers to them. Like me.”

I continued to stare at the wall, though perhaps less angrily. Mostly because her stroking was so rhythmic. 

“She has kept people like me, people like the scribes, and a handful of others knowledgeable of the reality of our world, and what to expect in the future. We have always kept a close eye on her, for fear that our last beloved ruler would fall. And she hasn’t. So I chose to believe it when she says that Alice is returning, and that we cannot act until then.” 

“If that’s true, then we can’t do anything. And I’m stuck, dooming my friends to death.” 

“You were too early.” 

“How early is too early?” 

Sylph closed her eyes and paused in her stroking of my head. “I don’t think you want to know.” 

“I want to know, Sylph.” 

“Years.” 

My stomach churned. “No.” 

“Yes.” 

“I’m not waiting that long for the Duchess to give us aid.” 

“Perhaps it’s not the end. That’s when Alice returns. But things can still happen between now and then.” 

“If she knows all things, then what is the point of trying to reason with her? She must have made up her mind hundreds of years ago. I can’t convince someone of that.” 

“I don’t know, you’re pretty convincing.”

“No, I’m not.”

Sylph sighed. “Not with that attitude, Margret.” 

“You saw how I acted. I’m not going be able to show myself in front of her again. I’ve already ruined everything. I swore at her. I treated her like… Like a noble. Less than that.” 

“What did I say to you about speaking your mind? She knows who you are already. She already loves you. And what makes you think that she didn’t know this would be how the conversation was going to go from the beginning?” 

I groaned. “My head is dizzy. And I smell like pastries. I hate this. Sweet things make my stomach go on edge.”

Sylph dug herself under the covers to join me, pressing her face into my neck. “It’s all rather complicated, isn’t it?”

“What are you doing?”

“Can’t I be beside you?” 

“It’s never just being “beside” you, with you.” 

“Well, can we do something else tonight, since you believed you’ve botched things with the Duchess?”

“No. Because you lied. And I didn’t want to spend more time that I had to here as it is. But now I’ve fucked everything and there’s no chance I can go back to Quill. Our deal is off.”

She purred. “I appreciate that you at least took the deal seriously.”

“I didn’t,” I muttered. “I thought you were going to do what you wanted regardless of the outcome.”

“I wouldn’t, Margret. And if you truly didn’t want me, I wouldn’t have made you.”

“Sometimes it feels like you do.”

“Does it?” Her eyes were luminous in the dark under the blankets. I stared at her. 

“… No.”

She poked my nose. “That’s what I thought.”

“Why do you like me?”

She smiled. “You’re very pretty.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re handsome.”

“I don’t understand you,” I muttered.

“You’ve got a fire in you, Margret. When I was young, and I was brought up on you and your prophecy, I imagined you as something entirely different.” 

“You were raised on stories of me?” She smiled secretively. “I don’t like the way you’re looking at me.” 

“Well, I was raised on a conceptual idea of you. I never knew what you would actually be like. And now that I’ve met you, I have to say, you are not at all what I assumed you would be.” 

“What am I supposed to be?”

“A Royal.”

I flinched. She shrugged. 

“That’s just what I assumed you would be. Like the Duchess? You were always portrayed as someone that knew all the answers. And then I met you. And I realized you are incredibly stupid sometimes.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that.” 

“A pleasure.” She wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me into her chilled grasp. And I went with her. I didn’t want to, but I did. I could still see the edges of red in my vision, I could still feel the beating of my heart, but she made it go away. Slowly but surely. It didn’t make any sense. She was just as to blame. But it was calm here. And it was warm, in a strange way. And I felt like I could fall asleep in her arms. 

“Give yourself time,” she murmured. “Let’s talk to the Duchess tomorrow.” 

I could… 

I could, but what would doing nothing accomplish? 

I shook my head, and pulled away. “No. I can’t- I can’t just sleep here. That’s not what Quill would do.”

“You’re not Quill. I am sure you will find a way to convince the Duchess. You don’t need to-” 

I forced myself out of bed and slipped into the desk by the window. There was a quill and blank scroll there. I picked up the writing implement experimentally. My mind was turning. 

“Margret. Come to bed.” I didn’t have to turn away to know that she was undressing again. I kept my eyes on the quill. 

“No. I can’t get angry this time. I can’t throw a tantrum like a child. I need to prepare.” I bit my lip until I tasted copper. “I have to do something.” 

“What would you even write?”

“I don’t know.” I closed my eyes, then put the feathered pen down and turned for the door. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Let me come with you.”

“Masturbate by yourself. You’re not using my mouth this time.” I closed the door behind me and was out of sight of that hall before she could find me. 

Perhaps I was still having the same tantrum as before. Perhaps I could still see red if I squinted. But Sylph wasn’t going to help. I couldn’t look to someone patting my back and telling me it will be alright. Burying my head in the sand has only ever harmed me. 

The palace was cold. I flicked my eyes over every hall, took every bend that seemed like one I shouldn’t, traveled up and down stairs, and pointedly ignored the looks of every Duchess noble that happened to look my way. But I’d pause on the humans. They seemed no different than the Queen’s servants at first. But then I caught them smiling, or laughing about something, and not being told to move along. I saw a few cards, fewer guards, but there was such a lack of soldiers that I was starting to wonder how the Duchess managed to rule with so little enforcement. 

I kept walking for what felt like hours. The torches burned down low. My feet began to feel like lead. I traveled in circles. I found the kitchens twice. Nobles came and went. Humans went to bed. And I kept walking, and kept finding no answers.

Until I came to a door that was freezing to the touch. Opening it led onto an outdoor balcony facing the sheer cliff. Down below, I could see the beginnings of the mines from here. Down there were the ants. The humans that the Duchess claimed she cared about. Unfortunate circumstances. Hah. She didn’t really care, I’d bet. 

It was a steep drop, below. I must have been three stories up, and the castle was built on a hill that only grew steeper the further back the palace was. If I fell, it would be a quick death. Like the cliffs of the Queen’s palace. I looked ahead at the mass of snow-covered mountains beyond, and imagined them as rolling waves. 

“It’s cold, today.” 

I whipped my head around to see the Duchess clutching a silver shawl around her shoulders. The wind picked up and whipped the vibrant blue curls from her porcelain skin. Her lips were pressed tightly together as she approached to look down below.

“Why are you here?” 

“I’m not sure you’d like the answer.” Her voice was so quiet, and yet it rolled over the wind like it was made to be heard.

“You’d know I would be here. Damned clairvoyant.” I growled. And then I stopped myself. I couldn’t be a child. Not for Quill. I grit my teeth, and quietly spoke against the noise of the wind. “I… Apologise. For my actions, before. Perhaps I spoke too harshly.” 

“No. You didn’t.” She rested her arms against the bannister. The metal felt like ice to me, but she didn’t flinch. “You spoke your mind.” 

“It doesn’t matter what I say. You won’t agree to it. You have everything planned out as it is.” I made a snowball and threw it to try and hit one of the pines nearby. I missed. 

“I can’t stop fate, Margret.” 

“Does fate control what you do now? Is it controlling the words you’re telling me right now? Is it controlling the conversation we’re having?” 

“Fate is more nebulous than that.” 

“Fate is shite.” I made another snowball. “I didn’t come here to be reminded why magic is awful, you know. I already know how terrible it is.” 

“Magic is not the evil, Margret.” 

“From where I’m standing, it took my brother, messed with my mind, and now it’s telling me that I can’t save my friends. So I would say it’s pretty awful.” I missed the next hit too.

The Duchess sighed and drew her shawl closer. “I always imagined this conversation, you know. When we would eventually meet. I knew we would talk, but I never knew what exactly we would say. I always thought it would be like meeting my sister again.”

I was seeing red again. “I am not the Red Queen.” 

“No, you’re not.”

The wind blew stronger than before, and with it came a flurry that wetted my hair and gave me chills. She didn’t shiver. 

“Have you ever left the palace?” I asked her.

“Not in more than seven hundred years. Perhaps longer.” 

“Why?” 

“I am the heart of the Duchess Kingdom.” 

“You’re immortal. You wouldn’t die. The Queen left, before. That’s how she found me.” 

“An extenuating circumstance.” 

“Fuck you.” I threw another snowball. That one missed too. And she went silent. 

I chewed on my lip. 

“There’s a baby in my group,” I said after moments ticked by. “A little boy. And he’s never seen the light of day. He’s going to die soon. He’ll die never seeing the sun.” 

Still, she was silent. 

“We barely have enough food for all of us,” I continued. “Because I left, Quill isn’t going to be able to feed them all. The scribes won’t give us anything. So those girls I left behind are going to have to starve, if they have any hope of keeping that brittle little boy alive. And beyond that, there are so many others that we want to save, and we can’t, because we can’t sustain them. If they go up to the surface, they’ll be taken, or worse, recognized. We don’t have a rebellion. We have a tiny little group of refugees begging for good and only surviving as long as we do. There’s no quality of life.” I growled under my breath as I hefted another snowball. That one hit its target. “And you want us to wait years for a new Alice to show up and magically make it all better.” 

The Duchess stared ahead at nothing. 

“Perhaps fate is important. Or perhaps it’s meaningless. But right now, you have the power to say that you’ll help us.”

“You’ll make a great Queen one day,” The royal murmured. 

“I don’t want to be Queen.” As soon as I said it, I knew it was true. And I hated it. 

“I know.” 

“I don’t want to be her.”

“You’re not.” 

“But I will be. I know madness. I’m not special. If she was your sister, if she was ever like you, and she fell, then I could too. And I will. And one day I’ll be culled too.”

“You’ll be better than my sister. I promise you.”

“I don’t care what you see in that vision of yours. I don’t trust it.” I gave up throwing snowballs. Instead, I fell down to my knees, and hugged them as I watched the wind send the trees bowing under its strength. “People want me to do something great. And now there’s a prophecy too. I didn’t sign up to be the Queen. Quill always wanted me to be, but I… I just did what he wanted, so I could help people, and so I could see that bloody bitch burn. And now, it’s set in stone. There’s no question about it anymore. I can’t avoid it. That’s what I have to be now. That’s who I’m going to become. I can’t avoid it. Your stupid fate is already there to tell me. One day I’m going to be Queen.” 

She went quiet again. 

“So until that happens, I want to do something good. And that means helping people. Humanity. And Nobility. Everyone. We can’t keep living like this. It doesn’t matter who I am. I can be the face of the revolution if Quill wants me to be, but I shouldn’t be the answer. I just want to help people. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.” 

A hand wiped the tears away, but it wasn’t mine. 

“Rettah had a good sister.”

I looked up to her through watery eyes. “He didn’t deserve to die,” I said softly. 

“He isn’t dead, Margret.”

“You… You don’t have the right to say that.” I turned away from her. 

She dropped her hand. “You block your heart off from him because you think he’s gone.”

“He IS gone.”

“He was never killed.”

“No. Magic got to him first.” I glared at the trees. “You can’t stand there and tell me that yellow-eyed parasite is him. It’s not him. He’s forsaken everything. He doesn’t deserve Rettah’s name.”

“I can’t convince you of anything. It’s up for you to decide.”

“And it seems I can’t convince you of anything either. Typical. I came here afraid, you know. I didn’t know how to hold myself. I thought that I needed to be excellent for you. Put on a show. But now I see the truth. All Royals will ever do is cover their own arses with twisted logic. You are no different than your mad sister. You are every bit the same as the others.” 

She said nothing. I waited for the anger, for the hate, for a reaction of any kind, but when I looked up, she was just watching the snowfall.

Slowly, she opened her mouth, as if the words were at the edge of her lips, about to fall like snow.

“Wonderland is broken, Margret. And it’s been broken for so long, that people believe this is how we’ll ever be. I see only the future and the past. It’s difficult to live in the present when I live in trying use the future to help us now. I don’t see the death and decay now. I see what it will be, what it has been. Except for my boy. That Benjamin.” She knelt down beside me, her dress fanning out around her like petals. “He’s alive. And he’s real. And now. And this is all the time that I will have with him. One day, he will be dead. And one day, I will never see him again. Every minute I am there with him, I savor. Every moment he says or does something, I listen. He is just a noble. There’s nothing magical about him. I knew his future since before he was born. And yet I live for every moment he is alive now. I had been waiting all this time, and now time is moving too fast for me to catch. And I can’t go back. My memories could be clear as glass, and they wouldn’t be real. The same is true of the future. I can see all I want, but it’s not until it happens that I experience it.” She sighed. “That baby boy of yours. How did he look, when you last left him? Do you think he’ll last your return?” 

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. 

“You should leave soon, then.”

“I can’t.”

“How much would it take?”

I blinked. “What?”

“How much would it take for that little boy to survive?”

“I… I don’t know.” She just looked at me. With those eyes, those strange luminescent eyes that saw everything and yet were blind to the world. But maybe she did see. 

Because she was smiling at me the same way my mother used to. 

“Fate is fate,” she said. “And it has always guided me. But fate will not keep people warm. And fate will not keep people safe unless it is good and ready to. Concepts do not keep people warm at night. Stories don’t feed us. And I would be worse than my siblings if I were to let innocent people die while claiming to maintain my sanity.” She closed her eyes. “I have no excuse. Free will. It’s a concept I haven’t thought of in ages. I see what will happen. But to go against it, to choose the opposite… It scares me, Margret. I told you, before. I am a coward.” She smiled sadly. “Because I have seen so much go wrong. And I’m afraid what might happen if it gets any worse. You are our only hope.”

“No, I’m not. We have Quill. We have our group. We have anyone else we can get our hands on.” 

“Perhaps…” She opened her eyes on the world below. “Perhaps. Once we leave fate, anything could happen.”

“Would helping others go so far off the rails?”

She shrugged her shoulders delicately. “I don’t know the answer.” She turned to me with a sheepish smile. “And I’ve never felt more terrified to say something like that.” 

“Being scared is something you need to get used to,” I said. “It’s something we’ve dealt with, every day. That’s what war is. Keep moving, even when you’re scared. Especially when you’re scared. We’ll never win if we only do what’s safe.” 

“But if we overreach, we lose.”

“But we haven’t even begun. Are you going to let us die before we can save you?” 

The Duchess, with her hands placed in her lap, leaned against my shoulder and shut her eyes. I stared at her for a second. She was so strange. Alien. But she was as warm as any person. 

“We will need to plan,” she said.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Muse:   
> Dodie - If I'm Being Honest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljRAR8LXo1k  
> Wolf - Born Ready: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGdHAyM6FZY

QUILL

There was chaos outside my door. I furrowed my brow as I tried to think of a reason. Problems these days didn’t usually get to such a level. 

Though, with the number we’d cultivated, I suppose it was going to happen eventually. 

The tunnels had become a different, living world. I had at my command a handful of nobles, and humans that provided an extra set of arms for supplies, humans that were “owned” and thus not sought after when traveling alongside their “masters”. Seeing the multicolored hair in the tunnels had been nerve-wracking at first. What had once been silence had turned into a meticulous, quick moving system of supplies in and out, and the transition was difficult, not knowing if I could trust them. 

The girls had been wary, too. These were strangers, and more than that, they were Wonderlanders. They all probably thought these people were doing it for some kind of gain. No noble did things unless they were doing so for the sake of avarice. It didn’t matter their heritage or care for the men that lived in the hole and never once lifted a finger to fix the regime. They didn’t know the truth of the world. 

But then I realized just how deep their understanding was. They’d known about the scribes from the beginning. Friends and distant family, they were more than happy to provide for the little refugee group we had that was more a hope than a rebellion. And a young Duchess noble man, little more than a teenager, took one look at me and was filled with striking adoration. It was off-putting, to say the least. 

All of them knew about the prophecy. All of them had been raised on it. What had appeared to be something of heavy consequence that changed the very fabric of how I viewed my life, was a story told to children before bed in the homes of those who dared to think of overthrowing the Queen. Their numbers were scarce, and none of them had ever even thought to work together for the sake of fear, but they knew. 

They weren’t a network. Many hadn’t known the other existed in the first place. They simply knew about the reality of Wonderland in some small way, and had quietly nursed that discomfort in the back of their minds in the hopes that perhaps one day they’d be able to say it aloud. They weren’t well versed on exactly how to solve any problems, but they knew that the Queen was not a benevolent ruler. None of the royals were. And that was enough. 

Eventually, that became enough for even Angie to stomach them. And I would say that was quite the achievement. 

We grew, day by day, thanks to them. In supplies, in morale. And I was at wits end trying to manage it all. I had spent so long angry that we were a dwindling, dying group, that I felt like a bastard for disliking the sheer amount of work that needed to be moderated now. People had to be tracked. Inventory was now a task accomplished by several. Food was now cooked in constant, large batches for those that didn’t have time or money to take care of themselves on top of what they were doing for us. And more refugees were coming in by the day. More people. An actual rebellion was on my hands. 

We maintained what rapport I could, stuttering and wishing Margret was there to offer the speeches she was so good at. The one thing I couldn’t seem to do was ignite their hearts the way that Queen noble did. And I could see it all on the cusp of their tongues, hanging there unaddressed. Where was the woman that would be Queen? I was merely the scribe, the one that facilitated her predestined rise to power. She was the head of the operation, wasn’t she? But she was away, I’d tell them. And they’d smile and continue to hold their breaths waiting for the real leader of the rebellion to return. I wasn’t disappointed in their perceived notions, exactly. But I was surprised. That book burning a hole in the center of my desk with the uncanny portrait of myself made hundreds of years before my birth told a very different tale. There were many hands involved in this destiny. And they only ever seemed to care for one of them. 

Granted, she was the loudest one. And to have a direct usurpation of arguably the most powerful royal, that made for good storytelling. 

I wasn’t jealous. On my honor, I wasn’t.

It seemed like the only one that talked about Jessie these days was Winnie. The other girls had just… Moved on. Perhaps that wasn’t the right word. They cared in the back of their minds, but not once had I heard them talk about what she meant to us. Jessie was just another fallen warrior, not a friend or a little girl that had never reached the age of twenty. Was it out of guilt, or did we need to move on? Was this what we had to become, in order to keep this rebellion going? 

And Isabelle was only a distant thought, someone that probably didn’t even exist anymore. Evaline, well, Evaline had died before anything had even happened. We had greater things to attend to. We didn’t have the power to enter the castle proper. We had to wait. And sit. And forget. 

I still remembered them. Through all of this, I still remembered. And I planned. 

And we continued working. All of them listened to the girls with the kind of care that I had only ever dreamed of other nobles providing. They didn’t see them as humans. They saw them as people. Treated with respect, they began to come around just as I had. And in a few weeks, we had become something so much greater. I was beginning to see something I had only ever thought of as a pipe dream. Even without a clear leader, we were meticulous, structurally sound, and careful. 

So an argument occurring outside my room didn’t seem in character. I opened the door to try and provide intervention knowing full well I wouldn’t be able to say much.

“Who the hell are you?” Margret hissed. One hand was raised to strike the elderly King noble that had been carrying a bag of flour before it fell into a puff of smoke all over the tunnel floor. The other hand was tightly gripped on the man’s arm, fingernails digging into loose pale flesh. Sylph, looking more curious than concerned, leaned against the stone wall examining her nails. 

It was ludicrous. Colin was about to faint. The man was already struggling with a back that didn’t function as well as it should. He was trying to talk, but that stutter kept him from being able to explain himself. He was struck in between the fervor of coming face to face with his living legend and the fear that she could very much rip out his throat if she perceived him as a threat. 

“Margret,” I called out sharply. The redhead dropped the man like he was made out of hot coals and flicked her head over to me with a look of sheer cluelessness. My heart fluttered. I told myself it was because I was grateful her sanity was still intact. That had to be it. For a moment, I’d been sure she would truly harm the man. 

“Quill?” She asked like a lost child. Her shoulders sagged, and she suddenly seemed very out of place in the middle of the subterranean hallway. 

“It seems I have some explaining to do.”

“He’s… he’s one of ours?” She kept glancing back to Colin like a nervous caged animal. 

“As are all the others you have yet to meet.” I helped the poor old man to his feet. Colin gulped before nodding his head at Margret with a nervous chuckle.

“I’m very sorry I didn’t explain myself,” he said through a series of stutters. “It’s a pleasure to meet you – I’m very sorry – very sorry indeed. I didn’t realize – oh my dear, I apologize profusely.” 

“It’s alright.” Margret bashfully turned her head away. The guilt was plain on her face. “I didn’t realize. I…” She looked to the mess of flour and flinched, struggling to pick it up again for him. “Oh, I didn’t… I didn’t see. I just saw the hair. I was certain we’d been found.”

“I told you,” Sylph crooned behind her. 

“It’s alright!” Colin said quickly. “I’ll just get more.”

“It’s a waste of food!” She said fretfully. “I shouldn’t-“ 

“No, no! I know you didn’t mean anything by it!” The King noble was beaming that same idolizing sparkling smile now. “I’m just glad you’re back! It’s – it’s wonderful to meet you in person!” 

“Margret.” I patted her shoulder, and she stood to attention immediately, more confused than ever. “It’s alright. We should discuss things in my office.”

She looked at my hand in shock. “But - Quill…? Are you alright?” 

“Tired.” I smiled slightly. “Let’s talk.”

“Will you be needing me as well?” The Duchess noble spoke up as Colin went pottering away with his severely damaged back of flour, puffs of white floating after him. Sylph was different today. That secretive smile had grown wider. Now that I knew why she always looked like a cat with the cream, though, she seemed rather declawed. There weren’t any secrets left to reveal. So did she act like she knew something I didn’t?

“The scribes said they’d like you back as soon as possible,” I said, expecting some sort of reaction. But she just nodded her head as though she had been expecting me to say such a thing. I maintained a carefully neutral face. 

“Very well. I’ll fill you in on my report when I have finished my more official duties with Alexander.” 

“I’ll see you then.” Margret looked between us with wide eyes, but she was guided easily by my hand as I led her into my room. 

My chambers had turned into an office. The cot was shoved to the side in favor of all of the scrolls and books I used to keep track of the increasingly complicated system. I was on a permanent open-door policy for the case of any possible issue, on the chance something needed correcting. It gave an excellent excuse to keep me from doing anything distasteful. All of this, really, had completely torn my mind away from things. I hadn’t had my mind wander in ages. 

Margret closed the door behind her, then looked at me with a confused, curious look as she surveyed the mess of the room.

“So, what happened?” She said. 

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” I said as I sat at my desk. 

“You’re the one that’s been starting the rebellion without me,” she joked with a nervous smile. Sidling up to me, she looked over the newest drafts of the census. “How many people do we have?” 

“Forty, including ourselves. Eleven nobles. Twenty-nine humans.” 

“No,” she said in disbelief under her breath.

“Yes.”

She reached out to grab my shoulder, then stopped herself. Her smile dropped. “Sorry.” 

“You can hug me if you want.”

“Really?” 

“Ye-“

She grabbed me with a force of strength not often seen in people. I wasn’t sure how she managed to have such muscle.

“Quill!” She exclaimed as she danced around the room with me unfortunately in tow. 

“Yes?” My teeth rattled.

“What the hell have you done?” She was as alight as a child. “This is amazing!” 

“I talked with the scribes.” 

She held me out at arm’s length to see my face. “Talked?”

“Very strongly.” 

“No,” she said in disbelief.

“I believe there may have been some yelling involved.” 

“No!” 

“And I think I threw soup on one of their priceless carpets.”

“Quill!” She cried. There were tears in her eyes. 

“Yes, that is my name.” 

She hugged me again. Gentler this time. Her purr was deep. I found myself making a faint, similar noise against my better judgement. 

“I can’t… I just can’t believe how much you’ve managed to accomplish, without me,” she said softly. “I was so afraid I’d come back, and everyone would be dead. I thought I was leaving you to suffer.” 

I pat her back gingerly. “I couldn’t sit here doing nothing while you went off on your own, now could I. We are a team. I have to hold up my end of the bargain.” 

“But this is more than that. There are people here. Actual nobles, listening to us.” She pulled back again with wide eyes. “And they are listening, right? Everything is still secure? They believe in what we’re doing?”

“I assure you, they’re all on our side.” 

“But how can you know?” 

“They were personally vetted by the scribes. Friends and family. And…” I glanced back to the book still sitting on my desk. Behind my back, my fists were slowly clenching again. “Margret, I believe we should sit down and have a talk. About the Duchess.” 

“Oh. Oh!” She blinked. “I forgot, with everything. We should! I got her to help us!” 

I stared at her. “How much help?” 

“Shipments of everything we need. Food, coal, money for extra supplies, blankets, wool, medicine, weapons when the time comes.” Her grin widened with every word. I could only stare at her open-mouthed. “We brought back enough to accommodate thirty for a month, but she’s going to send more next week, with a liaison to take our requests for anything specific that would be suspicious if we bought ourselves. They’ll have the official decree of a royal. No one’s going to question trader carriages with that level of clearance, and they’ll unload them at night at the most secluded entrances in order to ensure absolute secrecy. We’ll never go hungry again.” 

It was my turn to hug her this time. I couldn’t stop myself, but she didn’t complain. 

“You’re amazing,” I muttered. “I thought – we were too early, I thought she would have never agreed. I was so sure.” 

“Early?” Her voice echoed strangely. I paused, pulled away, and looked up to her. 

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s complicated.”

“About the prophecy,” she said.

I stared at her. “You know about it.” 

“Yes,” she smiled a tired smile. “I got it straight from the source.” 

“You talked to the Duchess? I was under the impression you wouldn’t be able to get an audience. I thought for certain you would be discussing matters with the Right Hand, perhaps, or even the Left…” 

“Funny thing about that, I did a bit of yelling of my own. It went rather well.”

I gawked. “You YELLED at the Duchess?” 

“A little bit. Maybe a lot. I said a lot of things. A lot of very not nice things.” She sat down on the edge of my bed, looking somewhat self-conscious, and patted her skirt down as I sat down beside her. “She said it a lot, that we were too early. At first, she said no. And I thought I would be coming back with nothing.” 

“I know how you feel,” I muttered. “Those damn scribes seemed to think that we’d be fine for however long it took for Alice to return. It’s like it wasn’t real to them, this whole idea of a rebellion. It’s all just words on a page. Another thing for them to catalogue.” 

“Years,” she said softly. “I don’t even know how many. Vague terms like that put my stomach on edge. And I couldn’t stand her anymore. So I left, the first time. And eventually, we found each other again. I chewed her out for it, but… I don’t know how I got through to her. But I did. And I’m glad I did.”

“I’m glad you did, too. It’s just the way you are, Margret. Something about you makes people flock to your words.” I smiled. “It’s written in there that you’d be a great leader. The people we have working for us all know. They’ve all been waiting for you.” 

“But you’re in the prophecy, too, aren’t you?” 

“I’m a footnote, it seems.” I smiled. “And that’s alright. It’s you that we need as the figurehead. You’ll be the one to boost morale.” 

She frowned and pulled her legs up to wrap her arms around them. “I suppose.” 

“Are you afraid of such a position? I could be there to help,” I offered. “I could write your speeches, or help you prepare?” 

“It’s not that, Quill.” She shook her head and smiled. “It’s not important. What’s important is helping people. And that’s what we need to do, now that we have the supplies to do it. We’ll follow your plans.” 

“Margret, if there’s something you’re apprehensive about, you can talk to me,” I said carefully. The closer I got to her, the more she seemed to flinch. 

“How did you learn about the prophecy?” She asked offhandedly.

“I got the book. The Duchess had her clairvoyance transcribed hundreds of years ago, and it seems to have disseminated into various works of poetry and fable since then. My copy was old enough to have the Wonderlander depictions of us. It’s strange to find a picture of yourself drawn hundreds of years before you were ever born.” 

“There’s a drawing of you in the book?” She blinked.

“And of you.” I jumped up to grab it, then returned closer than before. She inched away from me in the subtlest of ways. She was avoiding me. I couldn’t fathom why. “Here,” I said, and turned the page to show her. 

“That’s not me,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Yes,” I chuckled. “It is.” 

“I don’t look like that. You can barely see any scarring in that picture. And the hair isn’t all matted like mine. And I don’t have porcelain skin like that, mine’s all mottled. It’s like they took some picture of a Queen noble women and added just enough definition to make it vaguely like me. It could very well be anyone.”

“Margret, it’s you. It says it in everything but your name. Do you see?” 

Her eyes trailed down the writing beside the portrait, then darkened. “Yes, I see.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

I looked over the text. “Are you worried about something?”

“It’s not pertinent to mission.” 

“If you don’t tell me it’s going to end up pertinent to mission because we’re going to end up fighting over stupid disagreements,” I argued. “Do you want to end up being torn down because of something like that?”

“We wouldn’t.” She was cold. Something wasn’t right. 

“Margret, you know me. And I know you. I would never judge you.” I bit my lip. There could be all sorts of reasons she was acting the way that she was. 

And yet my mind kept thinking back to that night we had both never deigned to speak of. I had to be mature enough to put it past me. I’d kissed countless people, and none of them had ever really mattered. Or, should matter. But I’d spurned her. And now I was too close. I couldn’t just cut her out of my life as I had the others. Here I was, the one that had told us to keep professional distance, touching her at every opportunity. 

I really was too loose, wasn’t I? I probably wanted it, on some level, and I hadn’t even thought of it. Spending too much time ignoring it, pretending I could be some celibate eunuch, I had the audacity to say no to someone as kind as her. 

This was ridiculous. She was uncomfortable. Of course she was uncomfortable. I had messed everything up for us.

“Margret-“ 

“I don’t want to be Queen,” she muttered. 

I stared at her. 

“Alright,” I finally managed to choke out. “Thank you for telling me.” 

“Are you upset?” She turned abruptly to me. 

“No,” I gave a nervous smile. “I wouldn’t want to be a Royal either.”

“But you don’t have to be!” She exclaimed. “And I do! So there’s no point in me glowering about it, because it’s going to happen if I want it to or not.” 

“You’re allowed to be upset, Margret.” 

“I can’t. It’s useless. And if I ever got my way, it would come at the cost of everyone else.” She curled up tighter on the bed. “I know what you told me you wanted out of me, Quill. And I was okay with going with it, then. I just wanted to help people. I didn’t… I didn’t see this as a mission with an end.” 

“You thought we would fail?”

“No! I just… I thought…” She turned away. “I don’t know what I thought. That I would die before an ending came to pass, maybe. But now, I know that there will be an end. And I can’t avoid it. I can’t do anything about it. The Duchess recognized me as the one who will be Queen. And now that stupid book makes it clear. I have to be a royal, one day.”

“One day. And how many days away is that?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Then don’t think about it,” I said. I patted her shoulder. She flinched again, and I did too. I dropped my hand. “Perhaps that prophecy won’t even come to pass. The Royals are all mad. The Duchess could be, too.” 

“Sylph trusts her,” she muttered. I froze. “But even the Duchess was worried what helping us might lead to. If we move too quickly, then in her eyes we risk breaking the prophecy entirely. The questions she had, about fate, it made me question everything. Is this really what we should be doing? What if we break everything, make today better for a tomorrow that we have doomed? But then, we were living in a tomorrow we couldn’t fathom before. It’s not like losing a prophecy should make any difference in our lives.” She sighed. “The Duchess had me all worried. But maybe I shouldn’t be. I need to keep people safe, and that’s all that matters to me.” 

“You trust Sylph?” I asked her quietly.

She flushed. I watched Margret curl up even more, until she seemed to be trying to hide in the ratty brown cloak and blouse. “Not exactly,” she said. “I just… She’s not hiding anything, as far as I can tell. And if there’s one person that is good at judging a royal, it’s their respective noble. And I’ve seen the royal for myself. I know what madness looks like. I know how it changes a person.”

“Sylph knew about the prophecy from the beginning, didn’t she?”

“Well, yes.” She blinked. “She talked about it a little. But I wouldn’t have believed her if she told me about it before I heard it from the Duchess herself.” 

“But she kept it a secret from us. She lied by omission.” 

“Maybe, but Quill, do you honestly think you would have listened to her if she told us about the prophecy with nothing but her word against ours? How much did it take for you to get that book from the scribes? I doubt they would have given it to her. And Sylph is… Strange, right?” She smiled hesitantly. “She says and does a lot of weird things. You brush them off because you believe they’re not important. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when she’s being serious. But not all of it, is… Terrible, exactly. It just takes some getting used to, I suppose.” 

I gaped at her. “Did something happen between you and Sylph?” 

She jumped like she’d been stabbed. “No!” She stuttered. “Why would you ask that?” 

“Because when you left, you were absolutely certain she was treasonous.” Flushed face, shivering body, shifting eyes. I didn’t want to pry, but I couldn’t help myself. I was worried. “You only followed her with much prodding, and even then it was to keep an eye on her. And now you’re defending her. I don’t understand how you can agree with her actions.” 

“We’re not together,” she said too quickly. 

I blinked. “I- I didn’t mean it like that-” 

“She just – I – She did things to me! That’s all!” 

My throat tightened. She backed up into the headboard of the bed, but I didn’t move an inch. 

“Did she force herself on you?” I asked hollowly.

“No – well, not exactly-” 

“Margret, I’m asking a serious question.” 

Everything was tight. My shoulders ached. Not Margret. Margret needed to be safe. Margret was good. Margret wasn’t tainted. 

“No! Can we stop talking about this please?” 

“She didn’t?”

“No!” She was as red as her hair. I turned away, feeling my face start to heat. I shouldn’t have been so presumptuous. This was inappropriate, and judgemental. It wasn’t as though I had any leg to stand on. But out of anyone, I never expected Margret…

“Sorry if it appeared I was prying. I was just worried. Sylph isn’t that strong or large, but perhaps… And I didn’t want you to be harmed…” As I spoke, the words sounded more and more grating to my ears. I needed to shut up. Just shut my mouth up and never talk again.

“Quill…” Her voice went soft, but I didn’t turn back around. “It’s okay. I’m okay.” A hand gently placed itself on my shoulder. I shivered. “I was just worried. We… After what happened, I didn’t want to make things more complicated. And then, with Sylph… Well, that wasn’t something I planned, exactly.”

“I’m happy that you found someone to take your mind off things.” 

She didn’t look happy when I looked back at her.

“Is something wrong?” 

“We aren’t together,” she muttered. “Sylph and I. It was just… I’d never done anything, with anyone before, and she… Convinced me, I don’t know. I agreed, just because I was so curious.” She couldn’t look me in the eye. “She told me I should at least learn something. I was, you know, inexperienced.” 

“Nothing?” 

“I’ve been kissed. That’s it.”

“Oh…” That guilt was fluttering in my gut. I could have – I could have been the one to help her. I could have been nicer. I could have been less of a cold bastard. Letting someone else use my body, it wouldn’t have been hard. Not like I’d never done it before. Just another way for me to help. Not for everyone, but at least for her. “I’m sorry.” 

“Why are you apologizing?” She smiled at me nervously.

“I could have been less of an arse about it.” 

“About what?” 

“About rejecting you – about everything that happened that day. I could have been – it wouldn’t have been hard to just…” She stared at me like I had three heads. I couldn’t even finish the sentence. 

“To just what, Quill?”

“To let you do what you wanted with me, just once.” 

She paled. 

“It wouldn’t have been hard,” I said. “Just what I usually do. And you’re a good person, I know you wouldn’t hurt me. It wasn’t fair to treat you like I did. I just jumped to conclusions. We could never have a relationship, but to just spurn you of all advances, that was not… Not…” Not my place. 

“Quill.”

“Sorry, I should stop talking.”

“No, but…” She scratched the back of her neck and tried to stutter through her words. Her face was pink. “I may not know much about any of this. But I don’t think that’s how any of this works. It’s your body, Quill. You chose what you want to do with it.”

I stood and went to the desk with my shoulders hunched, feeling more like a fool than I had in weeks. Somehow, Margret was very good at that. I couldn’t believe what I’d just said. “Apologies. I shouldn’t have ever broached the topic. We should be keeping things strictly professional between us, and I’m already breaking things down. Let’s get back on topic. Once the Duchess shipment comes in, we’ll be able to focus more on building insurgency parties to liberate larger facilities across the Capital.”

“We don’t have to be strictly professional.” She unfortunately followed after me, and laid a hand around my shoulder. I kept my gaze firmly in the other direction. “I appreciate you caring about me. I’m really, really new to this. It feels weird talking about it with others. But your priority was making sure I was safe, when I told you about Sylph. And that means something, Quill.”

“You deserve to be safe. You’re my friend.”

“And you don’t?”

“We’re not the same.”

“Why not?” 

“Because I’m a whore.” I shrugged her hand off of me. “I’m a whore, and I should be treated as such, and you should be focused on making sure the others know of your return. I’m certain the nobles will lose themselves seeing their savior. And that’s what you need to be. An untouched, pure head of a revolution. They’ll have need of me soon enough to go over their inventory.” I didn’t mean it to come out as cruel as it did. I felt terrible as soon as I’d said it. All I’d done was make things work. 

Why couldn’t she just go away?

Margret grabbed me by the chin and tugged me forward. I was forced to look her in the eyes. Green eyes. Pretty eyes. 

I hated this. 

“Quill,” her voice cracked. “Don’t talk like that. You’re the strongest person I know.” 

“I’m not strong. You are.”

“There are many ways to be strong, and you know that. Because you’re a genius. Aren’t you?” Her eyes watered. “Quill, how can you be so intelligent, and say something so stupid?”

“Let me go, Margret.” My heart was beating out of my chest. I wanted to turn away. I wanted to cry. I wanted to do anything other than continue to look at the poor Queen noble that was crying over me. It was a waste of tears. All of this was just a waste. I had better things to do. We didn’t need to dredge this up again. Anything but this. “You should be going.”

“Shut up.” She hugged me. “Just shut up.” 

I stared at the door to my room numbly. Her hands clasped tightly around my back, her face resting on top of my head. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I couldn’t cry. There hadn’t been any tears in years. I just stood there, unsure what to even do with this. This was wrong. And yet, I slowly pulled her closer, and held her as tight as she held me. I pressed my face into her shoulder, closed my eyes, and pretended the world didn’t exist. 

It was a good smell. 

“You can talk to me about these things,” she whimpered into my hair. 

“I don’t need to, anymore. They’re old wounds.”

“They’re obviously not. Not if you think that’s how you should be treated.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Margret. It makes me uncomfortable. Why would I dredge up something that does more harm than good? Let it be. Let’s just focus on what we need to do. It’s not like this affects the plan.”

“Shut up, Quill. You’re important.”

“Only as far as the prophecy is concerned.”

“Fuck the prophecy. You’re important.” She held me so tight I thought she would bruise my ribs. “I would never hurt you just because I wanted something from you, do you understand that?”

“Stop.”

“I wouldn’t. You’re too important for that.” A hand combed through my hair. “You’re not the founder of this rebellion, Quill. You’re you. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met, the strongest, the most willful, the only one who didn’t give up on me. The one that was always there. The one that knew the truth. The one that was there every step of the way. The one I… I…”

“Margret.”

“Shut up.” She held me tighter.

“Margret, I can’t breathe.”

“Sorry.” She loosened it a bit, enough for me to look up at her. Her tears made her whole face look splotchy and red. She was a mess. 

“I’ll stop talking like that,” I muttered. “I promise.”

“It’s not about talking like that. That’s how you feel. I didn’t even realize. I knew… I thought I knew a little. You told me, and I was shit in that moment. But I didn’t realize how bad it was. I didn’t understand.” 

“It doesn’t matter. We were both drunk. It’s better off being forgotten.”

“It does matter! Just because they’re old wounds, just because you don’t want to talk about them anymore, just because they hurt if you try to dig away at them to make sense out of the madness, doesn’t make them less important. They hurt you, Quill. You shouldn’t be hurt.”

“People hurt every day, Margret.”

“And my heart breaks over them too. But I know you. I know who you are. And I see you hurting right in front of me, trying to give yourself over because you seem to think you’re not worthy of being a person.”

“You don’t know who I am.”

She grimaced. “Really?”

I smiled sadly. “Really.” I gulped at the air and let it tumble forward. I felt like I wasn’t the one saying it. I was very far away, listening from a star as someone let their only chance at happiness fall into ruin in front of him. “I slept with my cousins. I slept with my father. And his friends. The rest of the castle. All of the guards. The Lord himself. The carriage driver, to get a ride to the Capital. Everyone that asked, I said yes. Because it felt good. And I like pain. And I like to be watched. And I like to be degraded. And I liked that it was my father.” The foolish boy gingerly pulled away from her. “You’re very sweet. And very innocent. And I wish I could have done what I could to help you find your way in the world. But you shouldn’t be interested in someone like me. I work with what I can, hide what I can, try to spend my time on other things that are constructive and less monstrous. But I can’t ignore that I get hard at the thought of my father fucking me. I can’t ignore that my cousins made me happy in ways I can’t even describe to you. I can’t ignore any of it, no matter how hard I try, because that’s who I am. No matter how much I accomplish, that will be who I am inside. You should focus on Sylph. Or anyone else that catches your fancy. And stop acting like we are the same. Because we aren’t.”

She slowly dropped her hands. I didn’t need to look her in the eye. I could already imagine the expression she was making, and I didn’t want to see it. All she had to do now, was turn around, and walk out the door. That’s all she needed to do. And we could pretend this conversation never happened, and we could move on with our work. We would still be able to say the occasional hello, but she would keep her distance now that she knew. 

Oddly, I felt at peace with that fact. It was strange, telling someone. Raw. But now it was over. I didn’t have to pretend to be the person she wanted me to be. 

“It must have been hard, growing up like that,” she said softly.

“Margret, please,” I muttered. “Just go away.”

“Do you really think that you are that, Quill? At the core of your being?” 

“No matter what I do, Margret, my thoughts will catch up eventually.”

“Why are you going to let that define you?” She grabbed me by the jaw and forced me to look at her. Still crying, still splotchy. “Quill, how many amazing ideas have you come up with? What have you accomplished for society? How can you say they’re meaningless? Is that kindness not at the core of who you are?” 

“Kindness?” I grimaced. “It’s guilt. All that we do, is out of guilt.” Her grip tightened uncomfortably.

“They’re your family, Quill,” she cried. “They’re our family. All of them. We keep them safe because we love them. We cried for Jessie and still cry because we loved her. We wanted Mary’s baby to see the sunlight because we love him. A heart big enough to see all of humanity as your family, that’s a level of kindness that can never be beaten out of your soul. No matter how many times you’re told you’re nothing, or you’re told you’re a monster, a sinner, a slut, a whore. You’d still sacrifice yourself, wouldn’t you?” I couldn’t say anything. “You don’t need to answer. I know you would. It’s like I said, Quill. I know you. I know the real you. What those people saw was what they wanted you to be. That’s not who you are. That’s never been who you are.” 

Maybe I had a few tears left. 

Tenderly, I cupped my hand over one of hers and held it. “You’re getting better at those speeches.” 

“Shut up!” She laughed through her tears. “I was trying to be serious.” 

“But it’s true.” I squeezed gently. My shoulders relaxed, just a bit. I had no idea how long I’d been tensed. Perhaps years. “Even if there’s a prophecy. I don’t believe anything can ever be set in stone. So, maybe you won’t be Queen. Maybe you’ll end up an amazing adventurer one day, telling these speeches at taverns and getting all the pretty girls to lord over you.”

“I don’t know why they like me so much,” she chuckled faintly. “I don’t do anything.”

“You’re yourself. Sometimes, that’s enough. Whatever happens, we stick to our plan. Not what some royal tells us we should be, or a library book. We stick to what we can accomplish, and work from there.”

“You want me to be Queen too, don’t you?”

“I want you in a place of power. For now, it’s enough that you can be there for the rebellion. Whatever happens after… We’ll think about when it happens after.”

“I’m not sure you’re capable of that. You’re quite the planner.”

I smiled into her blouse. “I’ll come up with alternate plans. I already have a few.”

“I believe that.” 

I held on a little tighter. Touching someone like this for the first time in so long felt strange. But it was warm. For someone that seemed so sharp, she was incredibly comfortable. 

My hand brushed up against her cloak, and I finally pulled away. 

“I have your old cloak.”

She blinked. “We can hug a little longer if you want.”

“No, it’s alright.” I scrambled over to my cot to grab it from under the ragged mattress. The dull black fabric felt strangely soft to the touch. Handing it to her, it’s almost as if the magical thing missed her. She tugged off the ratty brown thing, placed the black one around her shoulders, and it clung to her like the hug of an old friend. She stood up straight, smiled at me, and my heart lurched.

She really was a leader.

“I feel a little silly wearing this now,” she chuckled hesitantly. “It’s not like I need to hide here.”

“Some of these people will recognize the properties of that cloak. It will lend itself to your image.”

“Ah yes, my image,” she drawled. “Can’t be having that one being dashed. Better make sure none of them ever learn about what I used to do.”

“I’ve been keeping that silent, for now. No one seems to know about your life prior to the rebellion, thank goodness.”

“Let’s keep it that way.” Her eyebrows furrowed, and she played with the edge of the cloak. 

“What is it?”

“It doesn’t feel right, doing that.”

I sighed. “It’s alright, Margret.”

“But we’re giving them false hope, aren’t we?”

“No, we’re letting them focus on what needs to be focused on. What would they gain from learning about your past?”

“Truth?”

“In exchange for losing all of their trust.” I placed a hand on her shoulder. She looked so uncertain. “We need to keep everyone’s eyes on the future. You will drive them there. At least for now.” I smiled. “Whatever comes next, we won’t think about. Queens, Kings, none of those things have ever really mattered, have they? We’ve done this to bring people safety and freedom.”

She nodded hesitantly. “Right.”

“I mean it, Margret.”

“I know, I know.”

“Now, there are people I need to introduce you to. Let’s show them what I see in you.”

…..

Margret’s voice drilled through the crowd like a rapier, driving its message straight through to their hearts. Her voice was strong. She held herself high in the moment, hair back, her face pointed and strong, showing confidence I never saw in her on her own. Every word, every phrase, every sentence carried with it a weight that kept them all captivated. When it had just been the girls, it had felt like her convincing members of the family. Surrounded by dozens in the airy briefing room we’d recently uncovered, she was so much more than I had hoped for. It’s like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. They finally had someone to look to. I watched her from the side of the open ended room. Every time I listened to these speeches, I believed that we were heading towards a bright and shining future. 

“After we’ve reached that critical point, we’ll march on the castle. Then and only then, will we be able to have the strength to make it past the cards and the guards. But that is in a future that we must create. We need to work on what we can accomplish now. And that is freeing the world we live in, one person at a time. That’s why those of you abled-bodied will be split into insurgent groups to systematically take apart the system, one slave barrack at a time. We are small.” She smiled faintly. “But never forget how this was started. I’m only a Wonderlander. We are all just people. But we are smarter. We are clearer. And the Queen will rue the day that she underestimated what we are capable of. Remember how important each and every one of you are. Remember that you are making a history where children don’t have to be afraid anymore. Remember that fear was the only thing she ever had over you. Take that away, and you are all warriors.” 

The cheers were obnoxiously loud. Even after they were dismissed, they came up to the noble and shook her hand like they were meeting a royal. She refused to let them bow to her. Some of them tried, and one could see the serious discomfort in her eyes. She was polite in making them stand back up, though, smiling and apologizing repeatedly in between her ask. She was just a noble, she kept saying over and over. No matter how many times they brought up that stupid prophecy, she was adamant. 

I walked past them as soon as the crowd was clear enough. At least a dozen were still flocking to her, all bright smiles and glowing, reverent eyes. 

I coughed faintly as I quietly moved in beside her. “That was an excellent speech,” I said. 

She laughed nervously as she tried to jostle herself out of the way from the others. “All I did was explain your plans. You should be the one getting the cheers. It’s genius, the way you factored in everything.”

I shook my head. “I haven’t factored in everything. They’re all generalizations based on out of date knowledge. There’s no way of knowing how many soldiers the King has, or who else might know about us when that time comes. No, there’s going to be problems every step of the way. We’ll have to take them as they come. But the key was getting their morale up. And what you did was so much more.”

“For god’s sake, will you give yourself some credit?” She pulled me in front of the remaining group of bright eyed noble and human mob. I immediately shrank away. “Remember the brains of this rebellion, everyone. Quill’s stronger than me, I swear.”

“Of course,” one man said with a strained smile. “But Margret, could I pick your brain about something for a moment?”

“Oh, me too!” A young woman perked up. “I have to ask about your travel to the Duchess. Did you really yell at her the way Sylph said you did? I can’t even imagine.” 

“She yelled at the Duchess?” An elderly Queen noble was scandalized. “How did she get out alive?” 

“I’ll leave you to it.” I patted her shoulder and slipped away. 

“Damnit, Quill!” She tried to walk after me, but the crowd was large enough to let me slip away without her being able to follow. 

I let out a deep breath as soon as I left. There was still work to be done. Those faults in my plan were burning in the back of my mind. One wrong move meant death, and that didn’t just mean the girls anymore. I’d need to work on fail safes and other answers to possible problems that came our way. Tunnels out of this part of the tunnels in case our group was found, a better hidden entry for supplies. The work never ended. Everything was moving quickly, and yet I always felt like it wasn’t fast enough. With our schedule as it was, it would truly take years for us to get to the Queen. 

“Quill.” 

That chilling voice was really starting to get on my nerves. 

“Yes?” I said without slowing my pace. Sylph trotted up beside me, carrying that same faint, chilling smile. 

“That was quite a speech, wasn’t it?” 

“Yes, it was. I didn’t see you there.”

“I was speaking with Angie. Have you talked with her lately?”

“No. I’ve been busy with my own job. How is her management?” 

“I think she’s just happy to be in control of something.” 

“She deserves it. She’s smart.” 

“She’s still human.” 

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, Quill.” She chuckled. “So, how did you find my briefing? Was there anything lacking?” 

“I would have asked you to elaborate at the time if that were the case. You were fine. Do you need anything?”

“No, not really.”

“Then why are you walking beside me?”

“Am I not allowed to walk beside you?” She asked. I looked at her for a moment longer. 

“I have work I need to attend to,” I said. 

“I’ll walk you to your room, then.” 

“That isn’t necessary.” 

“I insist.” 

Our steps echoed against the walls of the tunnels. Wall sconces and braziers bounced with flame. A few nobles and humans wandered back and forth through the corridors back to their everyday schedule with renewed energy. I greeted them by name when we passed them. Sylph didn’t even bat an eye. 

When we stopped at my door, I turned to her. “This is my stop.”

“It seems to be, isn’t it?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Is there anything you need, before I leave you?”

“What did you really think of Margret’s speech?”

I sighed. “It was amazing. She is good at what she does.”

“She was handsome, wasn’t she?”

I just watched her.

She smiled. “People don’t talk about Evaline much anymore, do they?”

“Are you trying to rile me up?”

“Why would I be trying to do that? We’re allies, Quill. And with the scribes working in your favor, talking to you directly, it seems our worlds are ever more intertwined than before.” 

“I had my fill of subterfuge in the Lord’s Court. Tell me what you want.”

“I don’t want anything from you, Quill. I come with an opportunity. Isabelle.” 

I gripped the door frame tight.

“We can’t march on the castle. It’s a death sentence.”

“What if I said that I’d found her outside of the palace?”

“I wouldn’t believe you.” 

“Seeing is believing, isn’t that the saying?” She leaned against the wall of the corridor. Her icy eyes glittered as she looked through me. “Seeing as we’re allies, sharing intelligence appears paramount. I’ve been watching quietly since before I left, and got confirmation from a confidante today.” 

“You’ve been talking with people outside of the rebellion about us?” My nostrils flared. 

“Is that all you care about?” She raised an eyebrow. “Not finding her?”

“You don’t know me, Sylph, if you think for a second I would put a single girl’s life before everyone else’s.”

“Then I suppose you don’t want to know how to find her.”

“Why are you doing this? You might have Margret wrapped around your little finger, but I see through you. I know what you are. I’ve been in the Lord Court long enough to know a snake when I see one.” 

“How rude.” She pouted. “I am simply doing this to give you a little happiness. You can’t very well focus on a rebellion when you’re too busy pining over a dead girl and her little sister.”

“I was doing nothing of the sort.” 

“Then call this a favor. One I might want to call you on one day. Would that put your mind at ease?”

“Not in the slightest.” 

“Do you want Isabelle? Or not?”

None of this was right. She had an angle that drove icicles into my spine. What had been a simple partnership, what had been saving my family, had turned into something off and wrong. She hadn’t been like this before, but now… 

Now I was staring into the eyes of a predator. 

But I couldn’t deny this opportunity. 

I gritted my teeth. “Fine. I’ll bite. Where is she?”

She smiled. 

“I’ll bring you to her.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MUSE: 
> 
> Sound of War AGAIN because goddamn it really fits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4hlAsmfXco  
> And The Darker the Weather The Better the Man AGAIN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2IIppdumOE

It never ended. People flocked around me like seagulls, clambering for attention as I went from meal, to work, to looking for that elusive Lord noble that now appeared to be nowhere. I couldn’t move for increasingly invasive questions. It wasn’t them that I minded – I could deal with the overeager ones that simply wanted answers. But it was the knowledge behind them wanting me. It was like they didn’t care about the situation at hand. Forget the rebellion, it was the girl form the prophecy, could she sign my parchment? Offer a piece of humble wisdom? A page from her sermon of speeches? Perhaps she could stay to explain her life story, fill in all the pieces of the puzzle they hadn’t heard yet. Like everything about them was for their viewing pleasure. 

I sat through a particular fight between a Lord noble woman and young human boy arguing about how I founded the rebellion. They were so into the discussion, they didn’t hear my quiet correction that I hadn’t been the one to start it. 

I didn’t have a sermon. I just wanted to work. But as I ate my stew in the dining hall, I was brushing shoulders with unfamiliar faces watching me intently as though my chewing held the key to the universe. I was sitting on needles, watching each pair of eyes, seeing no understanding or kinship. Gone were the awkward but pleasant days of trying to get used to the girls, or, well… Quill. All I could see were the servants and Queen nobles from the palace, ogling an animal waiting to snap. They didn’t mean anything by their attention, I knew that, and yet the way they looked at me kept reminding me just how alien I was to them. How wrong, my mind kept telling me. I gripped my spoon tighter, strained a smile, and tried to remain as polite as I could. 

“Would you like some more stew?” A Duchess nobleman asked as soon as I finished my last spoonful. At least three of them stood up to grab more from the cauldron. One of the old girls, Martha, was handling portions. I looked to her helplessly, but her hands were tied. She offered me a smile; it wasn’t genuine. And that was alright. Surrounded by the very kind of people they had a distaste for, I must have looked like an arse. I was just basking in noble attention. Truth was I hated it, but they didn’t know that, and I couldn’t hold that against them. 

“I’m alright,” I muttered under my breath as I stood to go. “Half of you should be preparing for the first mission. This is not the time to be talking about philosophy.” 

“You’ll be leading that, right?” A young human man called after me with an expectant grin. I paused, turned, and smiled at the lot with as much bravado as I could afford. All shining eyes, waiting to see the new world. That’s what I wanted to believe. That’s what I had to make. 

“Of course. I could never sit here and do nothing. That’s not what I’m here to accomplish.”

I had a few minutes before they would find me again, to breathe, and to collect my thoughts. Breaching the slave barracks Quill had selected would be theoretically easy. It was under the cover of darkness, near one of the hidden tunnel entrances, and the place had been reconned since before I got here to confirm its lax security. With any luck, they wouldn’t realize their situation until the next day. Some said we needed more time to plan something as crucial to the rebellion as this out, I’d only just come back. But they had no idea just how much of this was Quill’s doing. The speech had been his, the ideas had been his, every plan we’d ever come up with, his. And we were always too early, weren’t we? That kind of talk always made me laugh. 

The first of the three reserve rooms were piled high with blankets, food, and fuel. Winnie flitted from barrel to barrel with a sheaf of paper and wet quill in one hand, and a lit candlestick in the other. Angie sat at the teetering old desk by the door, with a pair of newly found eyeglasses bridging her nose. The rest of the inventory had already been catalogued, but the older woman was going through it again with a thorough, discriminating gaze. She didn’t even notice when I entered. 

Winnie did. 

“Margret!” She screamed so loud that the man working next door poked his head out to see what the matter was. I ducked my head into the room before he could see me. 

“I just wanted to come say a few words,” I said considerably quieter than her. “I haven’t had the chance, I thought it would be-“

It took all of three seconds for her to close the large gap between us. Then I was getting buffeted by a woollen dress and giggling laughter. Her grip was stronger than I remembered. I tried to pull away to gasp for air, but she had to give it that extra few seconds before she finally gave me room to breathe. 

“It’s been weeks,” she gasped. “I thought you forgot about me!” 

“I haven’t,” I chuckled. “I was making my rounds when I could. People seem to follow me around these days.” I nodded with a smile to Angie. “Nice to see you again too, Angie.” 

“Hmph.” She flicked her eyes up to me, then back to the page. “You lost weight again.” 

“I’m going to work on putting it back. I just had stew.” 

“You need to eat more. If you’re weak, you won’t be able to fight.”

“I’ll have another bowl, then.” I wrinkled my nose. 

“I think you look perfect.” Winnie smiled with her wide, owl eyes. 

“I… Thank you.” 

“Are you alright?” 

“Oh, I’m lovely.” Running a hand through my hair, I had to flush. She seemed so obvious now. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it. Her head tilted to the side, looking at me almost like the others in the damned dining hall had. “I’m heading out for the first mission tomorrow. I’m a little nervous.”

“You’ll be excellent, Margret. I know you will.” She peered earnestly up at me. “You’re built for this.”

I sighed. “You heard about the prophecy too, did you?” 

She blinked. “The… oh, what the idiots from the scribes were talking about? Well, I heard things, but I wasn’t talking about that. You know what it’s like to…” She glanced at Angie, and lowered her voice. “You know…” She mimed the motion of stabbing. 

My smile strained. “Ah.”

“So, I know you’ll be fine.”

“If things go as planned, I won’t have to do that.”

She took my hands in hers. “Well, if it does come to that, be careful, alright?” She hesitated. “Don’t get yourself hurt.”

“It’ll just be another scar of many,” I grinned, and nonchalantly let my hands fall, trying to make it seem polite. “No harm done.” 

“Just because you’re a noble, doesn’t mean you’re invincible.” She looked at her feet. “When you get back, I thought, perhaps, we could have some time to talk again. Maybe a little more? I could show you the room I’ve found on my own. Perhaps we could even go up top together.”

Oh. Oh no. “I… Um…” 

“What?” 

“I think we should talk.” 

“What’s wrong, Margret?” She pressed forward and I only felt worse. 

“Take the drama out of the inventory room, if you will,” Angie looked down her nose at us through the lenses of her glasses. “You’re suffocating the room. These catacombs are already as stuffy as it is.” 

“There’s no drama!” I said quickly. Angie just huffed.

I pulled Winnie out from the storeroom with a flush. 

“Then what’s wrong?” Winnie murmured as I shut the door behind me. 

Nobles passed by in the hall and my hackles rose. Not a moment’s peace. They didn’t exactly follow me like lost children, but they still gave us a pregnant pause with shining smiles before continuing down the hall, whispering things that I knew had to do with me. It was going to be rumors throughout the damned base at this rate. It had barely started and I was already sick of this. I could almost see red. 

I let out a soft sigh. 

Winnie peered up at my shoulder. “Margret?” 

“I’m… I’m not…” I dipped my head. “God, this is so complicated.”

Winnie scuffed her shoe and turned her head back down to the floor, somewhat abased. The two of us went quiet. I wondered if bravery had left her as much as it had me. I couldn’t even seem to string words together when it counted.

She coughed nervously to break the silence. “You’re not interested in women?”

“No- wait – that’s…” I flushed. 

Winnie’s eyes widened as she shot her gaze back up to me. “Oh. You and Sylph. But I though you two hated each other?”

“No! I mean, yes, but…” I wracked my brain for ways of explaining what I wanted to say. Everything I had planned suddenly died on my tongue. 

“No, it’s alright.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I shouldn’t pry. I apologize for making you feel uncomfortable. I suppose… I suppose I’m not… Well, that’s neither here nor there now. I’ll just go back to my work.” She made a move to grab the doorknob, and I grabbed her hand. 

I wasn’t sure why I did it. I didn’t know what the hell I expected to say. She stared at me, but I was tongue-tied. I ended up making a dying noise in my throat. 

“Margret, I can’t run away to cry if you don’t let go of my hand.” She giggled half-heartedly. I gritted my teeth. 

“Sylph and I aren’t together. Not like that. It’s not that I found someone else… You’re a very, very nice girl.” I flushed. “I just… I have someone I care about.” I couldn’t look her in the eye. “Someone that doesn’t want me back.” 

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” I grimaced. “I suppose… I suppose we’re dealing with the same problem right now.” 

“You fancy Quill?” 

I flinched. She laughed. 

“Margret, I mean this in the nicest, unbiased way possible. But you should give it up.” She let go of the doorknob, and patted my hand. “He’s an interesting soul, isn’t he? I tried, too. But you and I both know that there’s something wrong with him inside. I said it before. There’s a war inside his head. One I’m not sure he’ll ever win. And I don’t think you or I should bother waiting for that battle or attrition to be over. He makes for an excellent strategist. But a terrible lover.” She chuckled as though she were remembering a joke. “He’s sweet, but you need to open your eyes. He’s not even that pretty. A boring face, that straw hair, those freckles, and he’s a whole head shorter than you. You can do better.” 

I stared at her with an open mouth. “How can you say something like that, if you ever cared about him?” 

“I grew out of it.” She dropped her eyes. “Fancies are just that, fancies. But I guess didn’t, entirely. I still pick people that don’t want me.” 

“He’s not like that, Winnie.” I pulled my hand away from her. 

“You’re still stuck in that place.” She sighed. “I was there, before. It took a while to get out of it. And… And it took you.”

“What I feel isn’t the same as you.”

“How?” She asked with her big eyes. “Do you want to fuck him? You do, don’t you? See him writhing beneath you? Crying out as you clench down on him and milk him for all he’s worth?” She eyes widened impossibly large and I backed up with a growing heat in my cheeks. The words just fell out of her mouth like they were no different than describing the weather. 

“Don’t say things like that!”

“That’s what relationships are supposed to be, Margret. But I guess you’re too chaste and pure a “savior” for that.” She wanted to be angry. But she couldn’t hold it. Her shoulders dropped as soon as they bristled. She closed her eyes. “I’m willing to wait. Or maybe I’ll find someone else, eventually. Who knows?” 

“Winnie…” I tentatively reached out to her. She just stared at me. 

“What do you want, Margret?”

“To be friends with you. Why does everything have to be so sexual?”

“I’m a prostitute. I’m not sure what you expected.”

“A friend.” I clutched at her dress. She sighed.

“You’re too sweet, you know,” she muttered. “You really think I can change into that so easily after liking you? I need time to be angry. Give me time.”

“Oh…” I let her go. “I’m sorry. I… I’m just not used to this.”

“I can tell.” She patted my shoulder. “Go kill a few nobles for me, okay? I’ll be here to sing and revel in your success when you return.”

“I’m not killing anyone,” I said softly. “We’re doing this to save people, aren’t we?”

“As I said. Too sweet. Like sugar. We’ll need spice if you are to keep this rebellion afloat, Margret.” 

“Spice doesn’t have to mean killing nobles. We need to not be afraid to stand up to save those in need of saving.”

“A shame.” She turned. “I would have liked to see a few of them with their heads on pikes. Wouldn’t you?” 

She went back inside the storage room after that. Angie peered back at me from over her glasses with clear disapproval. I felt like withering under that stare. 

After that, the next was Mary. I didn’t need to enter the room. I didn’t want to. I kept quiet at the doorframe instead, and watched her. She was surrounded by all sizes and shapes of little ones in the center of the room, sat on a little stool with her back to a roaring fire. Sitting balanced on her knee, was her own boy. He was giggling and waving his arms around as she gently bounced him, finally able to sit up. I couldn’t believe how big children got in so little time. The sun had done wonders to him, too. Since he’d been able to get what he needed, he’d become a different boy. His hair had the faintest tinges of red. No one asked any questions. No one needed to. 

Mary held the attentions of the children with a story. Her eyes were lit up, her hands waving. Enraptured, the little ones listened to how the trial of Alice finished, and if she was going to survive the wretched Queen of Hearts. The woman made her hands grow taller and taller as she described how big Alice got.

“She can’t be a mile high,” one of the girls interrupted. “How could she fit inside the palace?”

“It’s just a story,” an elder boy sneered. “Stop taking it so seriously.”

“My mom says it’s real,” A little noble boy with his thumb in his mouth said. “She says that Wonderland used to have different shishics.”

“You mean physics?” The other boy raised an eyebrow. 

“No, I’m sure she said shishics.”

“Was that before or after you cleaned out your ears?” One of the girls laughed. The conversation just got more out of hand from there. Mary grabbed her little boy and tried to get their attention again, but then one of the toddlers started crying and a few others joined her. It just got louder. The woman seemed almost as distraught as the children. 

“Hey, hey,” I said as I moved quickly a wide smile. “There’s no need to fight, hush now.” I knelt to quiet down the toddler, then froze when I realized the stares. 

I probably should have thought this through. 

Whispers started to echo through the little group and my discomfort only grew when the little girl jumped to grab my leg with a giggle. 

“Margret should know!” She exclaimed proudly. “Tell them it’s not just a story! Alice was real, right? And you’re going to vanquish the Queen too, just like in the story!”

I grimaced at the little handful of children, and looked to Mary. “I just came by to say hi,” I said nervously. 

The woman smiled. Mary was alright now. Well fleshed out, her cheeks rosy. It made my heart a little warmer. “Margret is very busy, children. You should leave her be so she can do her job.”

“But we want Margret to tell us the story!” The girl cried. Her orange hair was pulled into a tight little bun. “Please?” She looked up to me with wide, hopeful yellow eyes. I laughed, gently brushed her hair, and shook my head. 

“I really do need to be going, she’s right. But you should listen to her while I’m gone, okay? You see, all of Mary’s stories are the same ones I grew up with.”

“That can’t be true,” the elder boy droned. “All of her stories have magic and things. Everyone knows that magic isn’t real. Have you ever even seen anything magical before?” 

“I have, in fact,” I said. 

“That’s a load of arse,” he said just as Mary shushed him for his language.

“Well, I could show you some right now.” I brushed the girl gently away as I came to my feet. Pairs of eyes watched me, completely mesmerized. Even the boy seemed to be curious. 

“How?” He asked. 

“I just need to put on my hood, you see. And then I disappear.” With a smile to Mary, I drew my cloak tight around me, and covered myself in the familiar old and worn fabric. 

Gasps echoed around the little handful of children. The boy with his thumb in his mouth dared to venture closer, then gently poked my leg with his free hand. “How did you do that?”

I leaned down until my face was at his level, and grinned. “Magic,” I said. 

“Is that how you’re going to take over the palace and become Queen?” He asked with wide eyes. 

I took off the hood, patted his shoulder, and tried to keep smiling. It was very hard. 

“Sure,” I said. “Mostly, it’s just to keep myself and everyone else safe. That’s all.”

“It looks kind of scary,” he said. “You were a stranger.”

“Some people think that. But I’ll only ever do it to help people. I can promise you that.” 

“And kill the bad Queen?” He pressed. 

“Eventually. Saving people is more important.” 

“But the bad people are the ones that made the problems in the first place!” He argued. I bit my lip, looked to Mary, and she took it as her cue to get their attention back. 

I left as quietly as I could, but at the last moment felt a hand on my shoulder.

Mary stood there with her cooing baby in her arms and a soft, warm smile on her face.

“It’s good to see you again, Margret.”

“It’s good to see you, too.” I smiled at the boy, and gently tickled his feet. “Have you thought about naming him yet?”

“No,” she sighed. “Not yet. Before, I didn’t want to, just in case. But now… Now I never thought I’d make it this far.”

I paused, then solemnly nodded. 

“I’m sure you’ll find an excellent name for him.”

“I’ll have to think on it a little longer.” She spoke more softly with a glance to the children. “Be careful out there, alright?”

“I’ll be fine, Mary. This is what I’m made to do.”

“No one is made to fight or kill. They do so because they have to.” 

“I wish that were true.” I opened the door. “Keep them safe, okay? I’ll want to see them again when I return.”

“Margret.” She uttered me name like an oath. She paused, her eyebrows furrowed as she seemed to forget what she was trying to say. Then she got sad. “Don’t lose yourself,” she finally decided. “We’ll be waiting for you, when you return. Everyone.”

“I know.” I smiled, and she did too. I wasn’t sure if either of us meant it. 

She left me to get the one thing I never thought I would touch again. 

Sitting in my room, holding onto that blade, I could see how the handle seemed to melt into my hands. The weather and time had made the thing fit my hand and my hand alone.

I had said no, at first. I had said a lot of things to Quill, when he’d laid out his plan. Some of them I had regretted at the time. We’d talked through it as professionally as we could, and I knew what the answer would be in the end. 

Because he was right, at the end of the day. There was nothing inherently evil about it. No matter how much I wanted to believe it called to me, no matter how many times I had once stayed up late at night convinced it was egging me on to kill, in the end it was just a pretty purple dagger with a few markings. Vorpal blade my arse, it was nothing but an instrument. Madness is inherent to our minds. Perhaps it can be a thing we can catch, but a blade can’t exactly exacerbate that.

I spent that night listening to the drops of water that didn’t exist, and the soft whispering that called me down to the center of the rabbit hole. Down there was nothing but bones. But I wanted to listen to the end of the world. 

The night we left, it was raining. Water splashed against tiles as we bounded through the darkened streets. My shoes were soaked through to the bone. There was fire beneath my veins. With the familiar dagger in my hand, the call of the siren’s song was not far behind. But I was surrounded. Each hood had beneath them eyes of admiration and determination flickering in the dim light of the clouded moon. They weren’t as silent as I would have liked, but they were smart. They listened, they stayed close, and unrecognized. 

All around us were the sounds of the late-night Capital that I had once grown to hate. Now the peals of laughter and the screams one could never judge as good or bad were just background noise. Already so close to the barracks from the underground entrance, we remained relatively unknown. Surely someone would have noticed the strangeness of fifteen figures such as ourselves, but in the Capital that wasn’t as strange as one may first think. We were just one of many.

The building was locked for the night, only one guard stationed at the small open building in front, currently asleep. A tall iron gate marked the outside, with several low structures within its courtyard. We’d not gotten specifics as to the number within each of those dilapidated structures, but we knew there had to be more than a hundred. That meant ferrying small groups silently from the barracks back to the entrance without anyone looking our way. Sure, this part of the Capital was relatively quiet and we saw no foot traffic for the moment, but there would still be a chance of being seen if we took too long. We’d have to be silent, and quick. Most importantly, we’d have to be streamlined. 

We left one of our own on watch on the other side of the road. 

The guard fell asleep like clockwork each night. The majority of their stock were human males in construction, which meant it was unlikely any noble group would raid it for their sexual exploitation. It also meant that no one would particularly care if the guards on duty weren’t doing their best. In other news, ripe for the plucking. 

I motioned for the one half of the group to follow me down the side of the building and into the alley. The other would be headed by a human woman in a dark blue tattered cloak. She nodded her head at me in confirmation as the two of us split up. The small group made smaller minimized possible casualties, and allowed for us to take things quicker, taking more at a time and covering more ground.

I knelt down beside the iron fencing, and then it was just one after the other. Each one climbed up onto my back, and I lifted them high enough for them to crawl over the side and land as gracefully as they could. Most of them got through without incident, but we all froze when one landed badly. He got up holding his shoulder, made a motion that he was alright, and we all let out a breath as we continued the operation. 

Once the last one was over, I jumped up onto the gate and began to climb. 

I didn’t like the eyes on me. They could have been continuing into the building while I was trying to get over, but instead they were just watching with the same damned awed expressions on their faces. I struggled over the fence, then dropped down and landed in a role. I stood up quickly, and motioned with my hands to get them moving. 

I could see looks of fear on their faces from under their hoods. The rain was pelting all of us. We didn’t have time.

“Go,” I hissed. 

“Your leg,” one whimpered.

I looked down to see blood pooling amidst the mud. 

I’d torn my leg on one of the iron spikes. 

Gritting my teeth, I motioned to them more adamantly, and began running to the nearest building. 

Inside, it smelled like decay. I’d seen worse, but this was still horrid. Feces pooling in half liquid, half solid puddles, urine leaking from buckets that hadn’t been emptied in ages. A few dead bodies were left to rot by the front of the door, piled worse than lumber. One could still see evidence of blunt force trauma to their heads. The living slept without blankets, shivering from the chill of the rain outside. Each bed was packed back to front in order to maximize space. 

They were all well built men for the work they needed to do, but one could still see the drain that the conditions caused them. Strain, malnourishment, breathing difficulties, hair loss, and greying were common. This wasn’t a profession that lasted long. 

Silently, one person at a time, each of my group went to their beds and softly roused them. The reaction was always the same. Wary confusion, fear, and silent shock as they realized they weren’t being woken for work. I went to one myself, a young boy, and quietly stroked his hair to wake him. 

Brown eyes opened up, and a moment later he looked like he was about to cry. 

“What’s going on?” He squeaked. I immediately put a finger to my lips and unearthed my hood just for a moment to show him. Maybe the red hair wouldn’t help. But perhaps empathetic eyes would. 

“We’re friends,” I whispered. “You need to stay quiet. We’re going to get all of you out of here. I promise.” 

There were tears in his eyes. He couldn’t believe it, kept quietly sputtering to himself, then went quiet when he saw the rest of us. 

“Take what you can carry,” I murmured. “We’ll need to move quickly. The nearest safe house is still several minutes away. It’s raining. Do you have a hood?”

The boy shook his head, the terror still present. “I don’t have anything, miss. I’m scared.”

“You don’t need to be scared. My name is Margret, what’s yours?”

“Joan,” he murmured. His shoulders relaxed just a little. Just enough. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Joan. Just follow me, alright?” I smiled at him before I pulled the hood back over. “We’ll be home and eating stew before you know it. I think one of my friends is making it particularly delicious today. You like stew, don’t you?” 

He nodded. I waited for him before joining the others. We kept them all quiet; if we spoke too loudly, we’d wake the others, and we wanted as little commotion as possible. Too many people trying to escape at once would be impossible to deal with. 

It took me a moment to realize that the dripping on the floor wasn’t just from the rain. I could feel warmth, instead of the chill from rainwater running down my leg. I looked down, and so did Joan. He held in another whimper. That gash was massive, bigger than I had realized. I hadn’t poked a hole through my cloak, thank goodness, but my leg was gouged deep. It was leaving a trail. Angry red around the puncture itself while the rest of me seemed to get paler. 

“Ignore it,” I whispered to the rest of the group that had stopped to stare. “We keep moving. We have to keep moving.”

“You’re seriously wounded,” a girl said. “Perhaps we should just take this group. We can come back for the rest later.”

“No,” I hissed. “We have one chance. If we leave the rest, then the security on this place will grow tenfold when they realize. There will be no hope of us getting them out of here without bloodshed. They’ll interrogate whoever we leave behind. I’m fine. I’ve suffered worse. Now go. We need to get that gate open for the others.”

The group stared at me; I held my cloak tighter. Joan looked to me with a nervous tremor in his jaw. Then, we marched forward.

Past the muddy yard we met up with the other group. They’d released their fair share of prisoners, nothing amiss on their side. But we had the same problem once again, fear growing in their voices as they took it upon themselves to point out what was already so obvious. I cut them off at the pass and pointed them towards the gate with a movement of my hand. 

After a hesitating moment, the head of their group nodded and crept forward. 

We led the men to the entrance under silence only punctuated by the slipping and sliding of bare feet on mud. The majority of them didn’t have shoes. 

Now was the time to make sure that recon could be trusted. If they were right, this gate was unlocked from the inside. They were being protected from the outside. Fear was enough to keep them in. I held in a breath as I went to use the handle.

It swung open. 

The rest of them took it from there. Each of them moved silently with their respective group to lead the men back down the street towards the hidden entrance of the Rabbit Hole. I stayed behind to make sure everyone was moving. 

I didn’t like that guard. Far too close. Sitting under the side building that offered him shelter from the rain, he seemed peaceful. But one wrong move, a loud enough noise, and he’d wake right up. Beneath my cloak, I brushed the handle of the dagger, and listened to it sing. We didn’t have much time, and we had already wasted so much of it gawking at me rather than getting anything done. 

Joan was the last to run. I nodded my head at him. “Go,” I muttered. 

“What about you?” He asked. I held a finger to my lips to silence him.

“I have to stay here. I’ll open the gate again. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

“I don’t believe in promises,” he whispered like a curse.

“Then you’ll have to wait and see. I can’t give you anymore than that. Save a bowl of stew for me.”

He stood there like he wanted to say something, but then he turned, and went running into the pelting rain. 

I knelt down into the mud behind the guard station. The familiar dizziness was buffeting my brain. I’d experienced blood loss before. I knew what it meant to nearly break down. With this feeling washing over me, I realised I’d lost more blood than I thought. At this rate, I wouldn’t be able to stay conscious. 

I cursed under my breath. This was such a stupid move on my part. The only thing that had gone wrong had been my own fault. That was just like me, too. I was the only mistake in this operation.

I looked ahead at the low buildings with a growing chill, then narrowed my eyes closer in front of me. 

The mud. 

I’d done it before. Maybe it would work this time, with a clearer head. 

First, I ripped off a piece of my blouse and tied it tight around my thigh just above the wound. It was difficult to judge just how tight was too tight, but I did what I could. Nasty looking, but functional. The gouge was pale flesh. I tried not to look too hard at it. Then was the mud. It didn’t hurt to pack the area with the stuff, but it certainly felt strange. Cold against the heat of the wound, and a strange tingling sensation that came with most things that should have been agony. When I was done, it was a half-assed job, but it would hold, and that was the important part. 

I sat back against the fence and felt the rain drip down my skin. I just needed to wait. We were already half done. It wouldn’t be much longer before everyone was safe, and we could take stock of all our new refugees. I’d have to talk to Joan again. But first, I needed to stay awake. Pinching myself helped, as did the rain, but there was that draw toward darkness that were alarmingly stronger with each passing moment. 

The sound of quiet snuffling alerted me. 

I listened. In between the rainfall and the sound of the blade’s song, was the quiet coughing of a man who had just woken up from an impromptu nap. My hand gripped the dagger in a vice, staring with hollow eyes out at the slave barracks. 

Just go back to sleep. Go to sleep, and pretend this never happened. He had to be tired. He was always tired. That was what recon said. Utterly dead to the world every night, didn’t wake up until a couple hours before his shift was over. 

“Hey,” he said, in a haze at first, but then a little louder. “Hey. You there.” The sound of glass bottles being knocked to the side. He’d been drinking. Damnit. 

There was silence as he waited for an answer. 

“What are you doing?” He called out over the roar of the rain. “You can’t just stand there like that. Don’t you know what time it is?”

More silence. I could taste blood. 

“Come over here, boy,” he said, a little kinder. “I just want to talk. What are you doing over here? This ain’t no bloody Red Light district. No loitering around here, you hear me?” 

“Sorry sir,” came the reply from our lookout. “I’ll be on my way. I was just waiting for some friends.”

“Yes. Good. Don’t want you causing any trouble, boy.” It went quiet. Then there was the sound of those bottles again. We had ten minutes before the group would be returning for the rest. The lookout would need to run to tell them. But I couldn’t say a word. I couldn’t even do anything. I had to just sit here, being useless, and hope that he remembered what to do.

“Wait, boy, before you go.” I cried out internally. “Why not share a little brandy with me? It’s bloody cold out tonight. Eternal land of summer. Ha. What a joke.”

“I’m fine, sir,” the lookout called out from across the road. “I really should be going, as you said.” 

“Nonsense, come here, have a tipple with me. Just a little one, no one would notice, right? We’ve got to keep ourselves warm on these freezing nights. Don’t usually drink on the job, but then, when it’s this miserable, you can’t help but look for ways to keep your spirits up.” He laughed. “Spirits. Get it?” I could hear the sound of the lookout’s steps and held in my breath. He should be running. Please, God, why wasn’t he running?

“Alright,” he said. His voice was louder, closer. “Just a tipple.” 

“There’s a lad. That’s it, have a drink. My name’s Veal by the way. Don’t laugh, my parents were butchers. Wanted me to be the same. What’s your name?”

“Jeremy.” 

“Right, right, I see Jeremy.” There was a pause. The guard hiccupped. “It’s a bloody cold night, ain’t it?”

“As you’ve said, sir.”  
Five minutes.

“That’s why you have to learn to enjoy things in life like this brandy. Got me a whole stock of the stuff from down by the distilleries.” He chuckled. “Don’t let me boss know. Bet he’s off enjoying the brothels right about now, leaving me out in the cold and storm. Wish I was there too, to be honest. This job doesn’t pay enough.” 

Silence.

“Say, Jeremy, anyone ever tell ya you look a little human?” 

“I get that sometimes, sir.”

“Must be the eyes. Maybe I’ve just been in the Capital too long. All saturated hair in the big blinding city, you know. Look at me,” he laughed. “Bright blue like the sky. Just like me mam. ‘Least around the sides. Dunno what happened to the top of me hair.” 

“I see, sir.” 

“Well, humans do well enough I suppose. Took one of the blokes to knock her up in the first place. Unfortunate, that, but that’s how the world goes round. They can be pretty, them folks.” He laughed again, more drunkenly that before. He was taking steady shots, one after the other in between the talking. “’Course, none of ‘em in here, unless you’re a deviant. All these working dogs stink to hell ‘n back. I wouldn’t even know why one would care for the muscled blokes. It’s those little ones everyone seems to be into these days.”

“I can understand that sir.” 

“I saw a bunch of Queen nobles chasing after this poor Lord fella the other day. Whelp didn’t stand a chance. A shame that nobles are being reduced to being treated like humans for twisted enjoyment. I’d tell a guard about it, but you know how they are. Don’t right listen to anything that doesn’t suit the Queen. And not much suits the Queen these days.” He laughed. 

“I would say so, sir.” 

“Are you a deviant, Jeremy?”

“No, sir. But the ones that raped me were.” 

“What’s that?”

“The ones that raped me, sir. And my mam.”

“I don’t think I can hear you that well boy, the rain and all that. Mind repeating yourself? Have another drink lad, there’s a sport.”

“I don’t think I will, sir. You see, the ones that last raped me were drinking something of the same sort when they did it. The others before that, well I don’t know. It was the last ones that did that I remember in particular. Because that was when they thought putting knives inside would be just as fun as a cock. I think you’re right though. They really do enjoy the small ones. I was nine when they first did it.”

“Excuse me?”

I stood up. The glass bottles shattered. 

In seconds, I’d slammed open the gate and run to the front of the guard building. Just enough time to see our lookout with his hands gripping one of the shards of from the bottle he’d broken against the side of the guard’s post, eyes wild and afraid as he held it to the man’s throat. The Duchess noble looked like he was damn near about to piss his pants.

Jeremy pulled off his hood with shaky hands. The brown hair was stained black by the rain. 

“You got it right the first time, sir,” He laughed nervously. “But I think that might be the only thing you’ve ever gotten right. You’re a pig, you know that? A right pig. Ha. And you don’t deserve whatever you’ve got.” His hands were shaking. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing. He was stalling. “You’re… You don’t even know what you’re saying.” 

“Hey!” The guard squeaked, bright blue eyes turning to me with a mixture of fear and relief. “You! Get him off of me! Call the guards!” 

“Jeremy!” I hissed. 

Jeremy turned back in shock. “Margret.” He was guilty. Afraid. He knew he’d done wrong. “I… I’m sorry.” 

The guard took a shard of the broken brandy bottle and sliced open the boy’s neck. 

Blood sprayed the boy’s neck like maroon wine. Jeremy choked and clutched at his throat, then fell forward until he was sitting on the wet cobbles, lost and forlorn. He stared at the ground like it held all the answers. 

I rushed to him, but I knew it was too late. He was gasping for air he couldn’t breath, choking on his own blood. The shard had severed far too much to save. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. 

I held the boy in my arms. He was younger than me, maybe a few years. I didn’t know him that well. He was one of Quill’s recruits, and I hadn’t done a good job of meeting with each of them. I didn’t even know his name before now. I wondered if Quill knew who to tell when I would return without him. 

Jeremy slowly raised up a hand, then gently tugged at my hood. He couldn’t even see my face. I pulled off the cloak. My hands trembled. He smiled at me. He was as pale as the grave, letting his hand drop. 

And then he was dead.

“You knew him,” the man muttered from behind his post. I peeled my eyes off Jeremy and turned to him. The Duchess Noble was large, and as blue as anything. There were multiple bottles behind him, two already empty. He stood there with the shard in his hands. 

That was fine. I had my own. 

“How did you know him?” The guard demanded. “Was he yours? You just left him to roam around like a bloody dog, didn’t you? You need to keep humans like that on leash! He could have killed me!”

I got up slowly. Those blue curls were awfully red today. Everything was red today. The sky opened up and screamed red. The man bled red. Not yet. But in time. The singing blade in my hands could cut it all off. Could cut everything off. 

It was gleeful to approach a pig and watch him squeal. 

“Stay back!” He squealed, reeling back with the shard still in his hand. He knocked over a couple bottles. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

“More than enough,” I said, revealing the sickly purple knife. 

He stared at it, then at me. “What’s wrong with your eyes?” He asked. I could hear the fear in his voice. “How are you doing that with your eyes?” 

“Do you know who I am?” I asked. 

He numbly shook his head. 

I dropped the hood back down around my head.

“But I don’t understand!” 

I leapt forward. 

His death wasn’t quick. Nor was it clean. And the knife was built for that. It tore at skin and ripped it to shreds without delivering a killing blow. And it seemed to know what I wanted. We were made for each other, it and I. We loved each other. And I had been away too long. 

Deep in the recesses of my mind, I could hear myself scream. But was so much louder was the red and the evil and the violence that called out to me. In the name of justice, perhaps. But was it really? Or was it just an excuse? None of that mattered anymore. Because I could watch this man’s heart beat its last as it pumped the rest of his blood out onto the floor below. He was begging. I could hear him crying out, asking for forgiveness. He wanted a quick death. But he deserved none of it. How many had been raped by the prick I’d torn from his fat crotch? Did he know that those he guarded fell one by one in the night from the cold and storm? None of that even mattered, either. He didn’t understand the truth of the world. And he never would. He was blind. 

I missed being able to see. 

The sound of running coming closer meant nothing to me. He was still alive, just barely. Hiccupping, trying to talk through mortal wounds. He was crying. What for, I wondered? He had such a lovely life. All this alcohol, the ability to kill who he pleased. Shouldn’t we all have the enjoyment of such prestigious privileges? 

“Bloody hell, it’s Jeremy,” someone hissed amid the din of the rain. “Get him out of here. You, grab him. We’ll get the others.” 

“Where’s Margret? The gate’s open!” 

“Just keep going!” 

A pair of eyes peered over the guard’s counter to see the demon below. 

I paused in the gutting of the man with my hand hovering over the open wound. 

“Margret?” Came a quiet, scared little voice. One of the girls, maybe. I didn’t understand. “Margret,” she said again. “We have to get the rest. Please.” 

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the guard. 

“We’re almost done. But we can’t leave without you.” 

“He’s dead.”

“Jeremy’s going to be brought back. We aren’t going to leave him out here. He doesn’t deserve to be found like that.” 

The Duchess blew bubbles of spit and blood with his mouth. 

“Margret. We need… We need to go.” 

I quietly stabbed the poor creature through the heart before standing to my feet. I smelled like metal. Dark red drained in rivulets from my cloak. My shoes were wet. 

I looked down at myself, then at the dagger. I wiped it down on the side of my cloak, then sheathed it. And then I tried to make my hands stop shaking. Or to be anywhere but here. Because there were people staring at me. And they all knew. 

“You killed him, right?” She whimpered. “He’s dead?”

“Yes,” I muttered.

“He killed Jeremy?”

“Yes.”

“We need to keep moving!” A man shouted from the entrance to the barracks. “We have the other half to move, let’s go!” 

Underneath her hood, there were tears in her eyes. “Thank you,” she said. Then she ran through the open gates, and left me there in the puddle of viscera. 

I stared into the rain. I couldn’t just stand here. I wasn’t doing anything. I had to help. I couldn’t just stop functioning.

That wasn’t what we were here to do. 

Joan was saving some stew. 

My legs worked on their own to go through those gates and finish the mission. No one said a word, but I still felt their eyes on me. Everyone was watching me with my badge of shame there for all to see. I’d killed a man.

I’d killed, and they all knew. 

The work went swiftly after that. The second half was much easier to move than the first. The gate was open and that saved us ample time, and then there was the fact that our fight in the front had woken some of them up already. By the time we entered the barracks proper, they were waking each other up and ready to move. 

I slammed the gate shut when we were finished, then took one last look at the guard outpost. The red had already been washed away by the stream of rainwater that flooded the street. The body was hidden away behind the counter. I could pretend he was sleeping. I could pretend that what I had done had never happened. 

A hand placed itself on my shoulder. I turned, and one of the men nodded his head towards the quickly disappearing group. 

“We need to keep going.” 

I stared at him. 

He smiled. “I’m hungry. Aren’t you?”

I couldn’t answer. My stomach yawned with an emptiness that no food could ever fill. My hands still dripped with blood I knew I’d never be able to wash away. The knife was quiet, sated for now. But it would be hungry again. And as I stared at him, all I could see was meat. 

I just pulled the hood even closer around my head, and kept running.


End file.
